THE popularity of amateur photography may have peaked in recent years, along with the boom in high quality but affordable imaging tools, but the history of amateur photography dates back to 1888 with the introduction of the Kodak #1 camera.

That camera, invented and marketed by George Eastman, a former bank clerk from New York, was a simple boxlike equipmentthat came loaded with a 100-exposure roll of film. It simplified photography, and suddenly, even people with no professional training became trigger-happy photographers.

Sadly, Eastman Kodak, the company behind the iconic camera, filed for bankruptcy last month, signalling the end of an era. The advent of the digital camera, a technology that Kodak, in fact, invented but failed to capitalise on, proved to be the company’s undoing.

The times are changing, as it were, and so have the traditional elements that make up photography. The gender stereotype of “male photographer, female model” that marked much of photography’s history is also slowly changing. These days photography is no longer seen as a technical pursuit so much as as an acquisition of aesthetics, and women, more and more, are exploring the possibilities it offers, especially as a hobby.