Of nickels and dimes - by Tawfik Mohammed

The first (ever) guest article on this blog is by Tawfik Mohammed, a flickr contact of mine and a passionate photographer. He also happens to be a student of Electrical Engineering from McGill university. In his post he talks about how and why he started the whole "Photography" shindig and goes onto describe his new found love for the Nikon D90 that he recently purchased after complex deliberation :) Why not hear it in his own words then?


Hokay..so I had to wake up in the morning a bit earlier than the alarm went off because my bladder was set too early. Half asleep, I answered nature's call and dropped myself in front of the laptop on the table and impulsively started checking my emails and such. There was one email that seemed to have come from a nickel-hydrogen compound..but one that hadn't completely satisfied Ni's bivalent nature. As I read the mail with one of my eyes still asleep and the other taking a nap it seemed like I was reading an invite to read a blog of some sort about automatic passport photo booths.. I went on to the next few emails and then dropped back to my bed (i don't really have one - it's just a mattress) and fell asleep for the next hour when the alarm finally went off.

Jump, shower, brush, change for work - in a few minutes I was at the laptop again. Going through the emails from earlier, I finally realized that the photo booth thing was really an invite to share some posts here; and that interested me quite a bit - especially because I was planning on starting a photo-blog myself.

I read up the first post on the blog about why NiH started photography and I was rather moved by the power of photography in someone's life. For me, it started with a 1960's Canon FT-QL that my father purchased with his first earning..and a small booklet on photography in an abandoned drawer in some part of our home. I didn't really get to play with it much; I have only been playing around with small digital cameras since the late 1990's. After moving to a rather well equipped mid-range Sony P&S (DSH-H10), I was beginning to feel the need for more for the pictures I had in mind. I tried out a friend's Nikon D90 and covered a few events with it. After delivering a thousand or so pictures with that camera, moving back to the P&S was just..painful.

As a university student, I am still financially dependent on my parents.. And I simply could not burden them with my desire to have a dSLR. I decided to pay for it on my own from my summer earnings, and bought the dSLR on credit. Paid off the debt from parents money (they don't know I bought this monster yet) and am slowly making up for the funds used now. That's the story of my D90..it really is, my precious guilt..."my preciousss".

If there are readers here who are still in the world of point and shoots, and cannot wait for their hands on a dSLR, I feel your pain. But I urge you not to despair. I still have my Sony and it takes some brilliant pictures! Yes, it does have a limited field of view; yes, it does have limited high ISO performance; yes, it's annoying to not have a view-finder; yes, it's terribly slow to auto-focus and record a snap - BUT, it's so light, so small, so portable and simple (It is an amazing feat of engineering by itself!). Yet, it has let me take some of my most favourite pictures.

"New York City Taxi" - By Tawfik Mohammed (Tmab 2003)

There's this other flickr user I happened to have come across who impresses me with his cell phone camera photography:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mmsyfullah/

Here's an idea for those who aren't convinced: Go to http://www.flickr.com/cameras/ and find your camera. Look at the photos that people have managed to take with your very camera! =) Inspiring..isn't it?

Snap away everybody..have fun =)

www.flickr.com/tmab2003.