Taking that First Photo

Gray
4 min readMay 1, 2023
Photo by SKINT on Unsplash

Just point your camera and shoot.

How it Started

The first time I took a photo was on my mobile phone. It was a Nokia 7230 if my memory serves me right. The framing was off, the pixels were really bad, and worse, it was a shaky shot. There were probably worse moments, but there I was, with a mobile phone in hand, feeling amazed at the technology. This was the time when the 3310s were just starting to go out of trend and colored screens with anime wallpapers and cute ringback tones were the norm. It felt as if the future was at my fingertips and I could do anything with just a push of a button.

The first time I got my very own digital camera, I took random pictures of things and instantly hated it. The photo was too bright, the color grading didn’t suit my taste, and the model had a red eye… So many problems with every detail I could ever think of, but I persisted. I never really learned how to compose an image — I just pointed my digital camera at something and took my shot. They never really paid off, but at least I had memories, right?

Years later, I would keep taking photos the same way — pointing and shooting, without really aiming for anything. I just wanted to capture what was in front of me, what was wrong with that? At some point, friends started telling me I took good photos. That felt…

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Gray

she/her | writer, photographer, QA engineer | Filipino expat in Japan