In 2001, my photography narrowed to the necessary. I used my camera to illustrate quite a few stories. Most of them were for the German magazine and focused on the lives of teenagers in Australia. I contributed stories on unusual achievements or undertakings by young people: a 17-year-old girl who completed a solo walk on the Bibbulmun Track; a teenage boy who built his own accommodation on the family property; the young girl above who loved circus skills and cello.
However, I was worried about the reliability of my camera at the same time as I began to depend on it. As I thought about replacing it, I knew that digital imaging was the way of the future, so I did not want to invest in new film equipment. At the same time, I could not afford digital equipment that would do a better job than the old Olympus. Prices were coming down on good digital equipment but had not yet reached the crossover point, for me, where they were cheaper than the film equivalent, quality for quality.
In these years, I used the Olympus to take photos on colour negative film. I would have the film developed and printed at a commercial processor, usually getting them back the same day. I scanned the prints for reproduction in the German magazine and others. My budget didn’t stretch to a film scanner. The photos reproduced well enough in the magazine, but scanning from prints had its limitations.
An earlier move into digital might have helped, or being able to afford a film scanner. Unfortunately, the style of freelancing that I could do from Albany was not all that lucrative. It was fun to do, but I often took other work to boost our income.
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