So a couple of days ago, I did something I never thought I’d do (again). I sold my Canon 50D and Tamron 18-200mm variable f stop lens. I bought both in 2008 and I’ve had them ever since.  They have served me very well and it was definitely bittersweet, but to fully understand just how bittersweet it was, you need to understand the part photography has played in my life…

I started taking photographs at a very young age. Honestly, they were all crap for a very long time. I mean I was like 8 when I got my own film camera and if anyone remembers film, if you don’t load it right it gets double or triple exposed. So yeah, the early photography years were a messy test run.

Like all kids of the ’90s, polaroids of various sorts were the coolest thing ever so I started to have quite a camera collection. I had my dad’s SUPER old Contax camera (Swiss made, stop being made in the 90’s, also my first SLR), several polaroid cameras, and a Pentax camera (my first film). Oh and then I had like the 9 million disposable cameras. I was the annoying friend who took pictures of everything! I still am. (And I still have all the prints…. from the VERY beginning).

When I was in high school I got a very basic digital camera. It was a kodak you could put on this little stand and it would supposedly upload all the images to my slow ass Dell desktop. It didn’t…  It was great for a while but now that I had been taking pictures for roughly 10 years, I was the main photographer for the school yearbook and would become a photography editor, I craved something better.

The journalism department at my high school was pretty well funded and we got some nice sony DSLRs fairly early on. I made sure I always had one reserved. Then when I was a senior, I got my own Canon Rebel DSLR. I was elated and more annoying to my friends than ever (although they did want to borrow it quite often).

(We were pulling a prank on a friend by covering his room in post it notes- 10,800 to be exact….)

In college I continued with yearbook and photography, getting more and more in depth into composition and techniques. I traded in the rebel for an XTi. I bought better lenses. The XTi broke at some point (I suspect due to an idiot Ex trying to insert the memory card incorrectly) so I got a 50D. New lenses, flashes, reflectors. I took workshops of various sorts. I was addicted (I’m probably still paying off that credit card bill- bad decision kids. Don’t use credit cards when you don’t have the money to begin with- that’s another story for another day….)

Anyway, I got into a grad school program for photography but ended up going for graphics instead. People told me having an advanced degree in photography was pointless (I shouldn’t have listened to them). By this time I had had well over 1000 photos published in various places. But photography fell by the wayside after college graduation and the start of post-grad. Life got in the way.

In the last year or so I’ve picked up photography again. Instagram did a pretty good job of reigniting that flame in me. I really try quite hard not to use filters. It’s the purist in me (I never liked using flashes. It always felt like cheating). Then I got a GoPro and that little tiny box has been a game changer! I keep trying to think of different ways to vlog. To make movies about my life without sitting in front of the camera and just rambling about some crap no one, not even I care about. I’ll sort it out eventually.

I lost a great deal of my photos to a corrupted hard drive recently which is pretty fucking depressing to be honest. Not only were those photos like really good but they were important memories for me. I’m not sure if I’ll get over losing them. But at least it taught me that you back stuff up in multiple places including a cloud.

In the last few months as I’ve been downsizing my life, I’ve had to reevaluate what I can realistically take with me while traveling. The 50D and it’s epic Tamron 18-200 lens have been taken some pretty fantastic places. All over France, Jamaica Germany, but she’s a beast. The camera and lens probably weigh around 5-8 lbs and require huge and expensive flash cards. And while I was able to update the camera to shoot video, it’s of much lesser quality than I would like. Recently, my best friend bought me (for like the rest of the holidays of my life) the Light L16 camera that has 16 lenses, 10 which will fire on any given shot making up a 52 megapixle image all in the compact size slightly bigger than an iPhone6+ (and while it doesn’t come out for a year), downsizing my camera collection seemed a bit easier.

So I sold my prime 50 fixed  and speedflash in Austin a few months ago. My Lowepro backpack shortly after and now the 50D and Tamron. I am VERY sad about this but as with everything all good things must come to an end.

However,

Here are some of the best pictures we’ve taken together. Beast, You’ll always be in my heart, my old friend.

UPDATE! Turns out the sale was a scam so now some random person has my camera, that I sold to pursue my dreams of travel and I have nothing. Thank you paypal and ebay!