About Me

You know how people say that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover? I disagree. The first thing that you see is the cover and then the rest of the text and writing on/in the book. We humans are visual beings, we need to see and feel to really know what something is to us, and sometimes we need to take things apart and put them back together to appreciate what really goes into something (Something like in Demolition starring Jake Gyllenhaal I guess – unless I completely misunderstood that film.)

wall of text:

I am a Mechanical Engineer by trade and a photographer at heart. I am half Hungarian and half Maltese but that’s something which I won’t get into.
I’ve always loved photography, since quite a young age honestly, but I’d be lying to you if I tell you that it is the only thing I was and am passionate about. I enjoyed taking things apart (and not fixing putting them back together up until a much later point in life) to learn how they worked and why they worked that way. I am also a bit of a petrol head might I add. At the moment I own a 2001 Alfa Romeo 147 which I wouldn’t trade for anything else in the world, partly because I love her and partly because its the only car I afford to maintain at the moment. I like making stuff, i.e. DIY. My philosophy is that if you want something done right, then do it yourself, but not before teaching yourself how to – having said this I might post some things to YouTube from time to time and speak about them here. I have a thing for travelling, in the sense that if I had a tinder account I’d put “loves to travel” in the description, like most people do – so I will have loads of travel photos on here.

Ok, so now that you know a smidgen about me I can say that combining the latter traits I grew to become interested in cameras, photography and anything related to them from a technical point of view. In this day and age having a digital camera is almost a necessity and it is almost sinful if you can’t take a semi-decent picture using a smartphone, at least. I wanted to delve deeper than just pressing a button and having a very usable photo. I wanted to have some control over MY photos. I started out by wanting to capture star trails with a shitty bridge camera. I say shitty but it was in fact quite good for what it was worth (Olympus SP-590uz), but its design lacked a good way of activating bulb mode, so I was left with blurry star whiffs.

From then (~2008) on I had to get myself a DSLR. Fast forward to now (2019) I went into oldschool mode (some might call it hipster but it really isn’t my thing) and started shooting film, mainly due to the fact that I want to learn how to develop film, play around with chemicals and also make my own cameras and see how far back in time I can push myself while still producing images. I do have to make it clear that it is a very slow process but it is there. Since around 2014 I have started an accidental collection of old film cameras which I sometimes have to fix as these old machines don’t always work at 100% capacity but they do try give their 110%. I now spend too much money and time looking for old cameras that appeal to me. Shooting film is an experience as you will never take a bunch of pointless images on film unless you have the money to waste. Developing it and seeing your images come out is another story for a different post.

While my main workhorse is a Canon 60D which does the job I do look forward to upgrading soon as my phone (sigh) takes similar quality images during the day and destroys the 60D at night, which is sad. I have since upgraded to a Canon EOS R and the 60D is now my backup camera (edited August 2020).

The scope of this website is to mainly showcase my work but also to give an insight to my process, workflow and camera hobbies by writing about them. I don’t particularly enjoy writing unless its facts or recounting a process in my own style, while giving all the necessary information to the reader. I spent 3 years in the largest media organisation on campus at University of Malta, The Third Eye, and while I do occasionally write for them the writings would be on totally different topics so I decided to have my own portal here.

I take photos and video (contact me for sample video work) for money and I do it well. Do contact me for a meeting or for a chat and we’ll discuss a package for your needs!

summary:

• Mechanical Engineer
• Passionate about photography and anything media
• Was a journalist while at uni
• I collect old cameras
• I spend too much money on old cameras
• I take (great) photos for your (valuable) money!
• Follow me on Instagram to enhance your feed – @szabography