I bought my first camera in 2018, with no (zero, nichts, null) knowledge of photography. I chose the one a relative recommended, because it was digital, fit my budget, and looked pretty. I had no idea I was buying a body with an MFT (micro four thirds) sensor or what that meant. I also didn’t know how to use it in manual mode. But it was very pretty.

With that camera and its all-purpose kit lens I went to Japan. The other kit lens, a medium telephoto, I didn’t take because I had no idea what it was for. I took lots and lots of photos. Most of them were rubbish, some were good enough to make my friends jealous (I went to Japan and you didn’t), and half a dozen or so were actually acceptable.

Since I didn’t know how to use the camera, I also knew absolutely nothing about “everything else”: light metering, color temperature, depth of field, composition, and so on. It’s a miracle that out of 1,800 shots, six were even remotely “publishable.” You could say those photos belonged more to the Japanese engineer who wrote the camera’s software than to me.

After that trip, the camera went into a drawer and I forgot about it. Until the pandemic. Back then I was living in Germany, and when my project there ended I decided I needed to stop. I felt that the last few years had been a headlong rush forward, and I couldn’t afford to keep going like that—neither physically nor mentally. So I stopped.

I missed traveling terribly, so the first thing I did when I returned to Spain was look for a destination. Sri Lanka (side note: it’s a wonderful country, go if you can). I took the camera, shot a ton of pictures… and every single one was garbage.

Seriously, this isn’t false modesty. The only salvageable shots from that trip were the ones I took with my phone—because I had the brilliant idea of putting the camera in manual mode without even knowing how many corners the exposure triangle has (spoiler: three). Very embarrasing.

So when I got back, I signed up for Pete Sánchez’s in-person photography basics course. He not only explained the fundamentals of using a camera but also gave us an introduction to digital post-production. We even got to use a flash. Ahhhh, this was a whole new world.

Suddenly, everything started to make sense.

I understood how not to blow out the skies.

I understood how to freeze water droplets from a fountain.

I understood… so many things that it was a shock. Turns out I could decide what I wanted to capture and how—not the camera! That I could take two completely different photos of the same scene just by tweaking exposure settings. OHHHHHHHHH.

By the time of my next trip, to Namibia, I had bought two more lenses, this time knowing exactly what I wanted: a prime and a long telephoto. And while the photos I took there aren’t National Geographic material, quite a few came out pretty nice, and I even printed a photobook to keep as a souvenir.

And then Germán Ruiz came into my life, with his photo tours around Asia. I signed up for the Vietnam and Cambodia trip, thinking, “This is my chance to finally take better travel photos.” Little did I know.

I came back with the best photos I’ve ever taken.

Shots like this one:

Svay Romeat Pagoda, Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Is it a great photo or not? It is.

On that trip I discovered that the most valuable gadget a photographer has is their own eyes—because photographs are made first by looking and thinking. Only then, maybe, do you pull out the camera.

I came back utterly hooked. Like Lewis Carroll’s character, this Alicia had fallen headfirst into the rabbit hole. Photography, with its not-quite-200 years of life, is a boundless world that could fill several lifetimes. Every time you master a technique, something new comes along—or you discover a photographer who shatters your assumptions. It never ends, and maybe that’s why it’s so addictive.

I still consider myself a beginner, but now I practice a lot and know much more. Of course I still make mistakes—like those crooked horizons that have become my trademark, and that I decided made a fitting name for this blog.

All in all, I’m very happy to have fallen into the photographic rabbit hole. And to open up this space to share my adventure with you.

Notes:

None of the links in this article are affiliate.
The opening illustration was generated with Sora AI.

Down the rabbit hole

Who invented photography?