Around February this year, I bought myself a new camera, my first camera. I bought a Fujifilm X-A3. My goal for having one was simple and that is so that once I travel, I can take better photos and my photos will have better quality. I do believe that pictures taken from actual cameras are better than those that are taken from mobile phones. And it would be somewhat a waste if I go somewhere and I would end up with pictures that should be okay but not great.

It’s an expensive equipment to buy and to keep spending on but once I bought my camera, there’s really no turning back! I hesitated but ultimately, I dove straight in without much plan at all on where this will lead to or will it be just a complete waste.

Since that day, it has become a part of my daily routine to watch videos about photography. It’s a new world that I entered, I started to look at things differently. There’s a lot to learn really and it feels like it will never stop. It’s fun to learn and to be inspired by watching videos and looking at pictures but then it’s totally different once I start to shoot.

Last June, I went to Hong Kong with my office mates who are my friends too. It was there that I started to just shoot away! I was not thinking much, not thinking about my composition on a technical level but just went out there, walked with my camera always and started taking pictures of everything. This was also where I discovered my feel for street photography. In street photography, you really do not have much time to think and to prepare your shot. You need to be able to think fast or just be ready to shoot.

Street photography in Hong Kong felt easy. It felt easy because I was able to overcome one of the biggest challenges in street photography or photography in general and it is worrying about what the people around you thinks about you. When you’re out there walking with your camera, people will notice you and they may even say a thing or two but for me, when I was in Hong Kong, I was a tourist and that’s what tourists do, they take pictures. Another thing that helped is that I was always with my friends or at least 95% of the time as there was a time when I walked around alone. Taking pictures in Hong Kong felt easy because it seemed normal.

However, once I got back here, of course, I’m no longer a tourist and I won’t always have my friends to go with me to places that I like to shoot at. To top it off, I live across the road from the office. So in a day to day scenario, even if I do bring my camera with me always, in a natural flow of things, I would not get a chance to really shoot something along the way (I’m thinking of that now as a challenge).

I feel like if I want to take new photos, I need to make time and I need to go to places to do it; no matter if I’m alone or not. That’s the way it really should be anyway but again, aside from enjoying seeing my photos get likes on Instagram (which is still low but it’s exponentially better already than before) I really don’t have a goal for this yet. As of now, I’m just enjoying all the exploration and the learning that I get from it.