DownUnder
Nikon Nomad
Just now I posted in a Leica thread. And it got me to thinking (yep, again!).
Looking back over my life, eight decades of it, and my photography, I'm pondering how my visual style, viewpoints and the 'physicals' of my progression in this art (some would call it craft) happened and developed over that time of my life.
Each decade of my life has had difference meanings, in photo terms. Cameras are only part of it. How I used them, and what I did with them, are more important. An integral part of my teen years, young adulthood, and now in my old age.
I was always interested in cameras. As a young in Canada, I played with my parents' Kodak Brownie used by my stepdad from 1947 to document my childhood. And the cameras of other family,. I clicked and fiddled with those so much, one aunt (wisely) hid her precious Kodak 620 from me, fearing I would damage or break it. (To her credit and mine she is 90 now, still has her camera, and while long unused it still functions.)
Do you remember 616 film? 116, 112, 828 Bantam and other odd formats, all now history. IIn 1959 I bought my first rolls of 616 Verichrome Pan. My early images were far from memorable, but I still have a few negatives from that time, all valued. In those long ago days 'D&P' was by the local pharmacist who used Kodak Tri-Chem packs and made contact prints on Velox paper. Enlargements were rare, precious things, 'rationed' for weddings, baptisms and funerals.
In 1961 I set up a home darkroom, in the family bathroom which I hogged for hours at night. An Anscomatic tank, Javex bottles for my chemistry, a WW2 era metal contact printer, Kodak Velox paper and three of my mom's baking trays. I stained the wash basin which annoyed my stepmom. Prints were given to family members. I subscribed to photo magazines, notably US Camera which introduced me to quality imagery by legendary photographers.
In 1962 I got into journalism, writing articles on local events for daily newspapers. For ten cents per column inch and $5 and $3 for news photos from two papers. I got into all this with my usual high energy and in 12 months I was earning more as a part-time freelancer than my dad did at his job, which created a fair bit of family angst, especially envy from my younger brother who had only a $2 weekly allowance.
That year I bought my first enlarger, a massive 4x5 thing from Burke & James in, IRRC, Chicago, delivered by mail order. Also a Yashica D TLR and my first 120 film - Verichrome Pan. Fifty cents a roll, $10 for a brick. Yep, them good old days.
I did weddings, babies, local news events and landscapes, printed on Kodabromide processed in Dektol, all we had then came from Kodak or Ansco, with a few rarities like Varigam from DuPont, Ilford being reserved for those elitist photographers in faraway exotic places like Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver. I did a lot of news photography and some art work which I sold by mail order to American buyers. A collector from Arizona bought a few dozen 8x10s and 11x14s, all chocolate-boxy fishing scenes taken in eastern Canada. To this day I wonder how many of my early work has survived. A museum also acquired images of historical interest, paying very little for them.
A few hundred ancient negatives have survived. For VP developed in DK60a, they enlarge surprisingly well.
That year I was sent (= forced) to a boarding school, supposedly to improve my academic standing but really to instill 'discipline' my step mom was convinced I needed. She was conformist and anxious and neurotically religious, and it severely upset her when neighbors said I was "different" from my school peers who were into sports, parties and dancing on weekends and being popular with their Alpha Male mates and of course girls. While I read books, wrote news items and articles, took long walks with my camera, and did generally solitary things. In 1960s French Canada to be "different" was akin to residing on an alien planet.
At the school I went on doing photography (to a lesser extent) and had a makeshift darkroom, A teacher had an Exakta which he kindly loaned me. I had my Yashica TLR and I developed but couldn't print my films. For three years I hated my teachers and my fellow students and the, to me, stultifying regime. I considered my boarding school years as a prison sentence, but I now realize how open-minded and progressive some of my teachers were. And I accept my time there prepared me for a more worldly adulthood, a lifelong wish to always improve myself, and travel.
In 1965 I got into full-time journalism. My first job as a new reporter paid CDN $35 a 40+ hour week. I did all but sports which I was no good at, whether playing or writing. After 15 difficult months (by which time I earned $45) I moved on to a better paying news job. Photography added to my work salary, mostly from weddings which (I happily gave up doing in 1967) and studio work which I did at home with one stand of old style Photofloods and a Metz electronic flash unit.
My cameras came and went. A Yashica D, then an A, later a '35 which I liked as it took 120 and 35mm film. In 1966 I got a new Rolleiflex 3.5E2, ordered by our local dentist who passed away before it was delivered. I paid CDN $195 for it (the widow kindly gifted me the deposit), a fortune at that time. I still have this Rollei, rarely used but part of my history.
This will suffice for now. I will go on in a future episode.
Others please join in with your own photo histories. As we know, almost everything has changed since the '60s. This may be an interesting and educational thread.
Looking back over my life, eight decades of it, and my photography, I'm pondering how my visual style, viewpoints and the 'physicals' of my progression in this art (some would call it craft) happened and developed over that time of my life.
Each decade of my life has had difference meanings, in photo terms. Cameras are only part of it. How I used them, and what I did with them, are more important. An integral part of my teen years, young adulthood, and now in my old age.
I was always interested in cameras. As a young in Canada, I played with my parents' Kodak Brownie used by my stepdad from 1947 to document my childhood. And the cameras of other family,. I clicked and fiddled with those so much, one aunt (wisely) hid her precious Kodak 620 from me, fearing I would damage or break it. (To her credit and mine she is 90 now, still has her camera, and while long unused it still functions.)
Do you remember 616 film? 116, 112, 828 Bantam and other odd formats, all now history. IIn 1959 I bought my first rolls of 616 Verichrome Pan. My early images were far from memorable, but I still have a few negatives from that time, all valued. In those long ago days 'D&P' was by the local pharmacist who used Kodak Tri-Chem packs and made contact prints on Velox paper. Enlargements were rare, precious things, 'rationed' for weddings, baptisms and funerals.
In 1961 I set up a home darkroom, in the family bathroom which I hogged for hours at night. An Anscomatic tank, Javex bottles for my chemistry, a WW2 era metal contact printer, Kodak Velox paper and three of my mom's baking trays. I stained the wash basin which annoyed my stepmom. Prints were given to family members. I subscribed to photo magazines, notably US Camera which introduced me to quality imagery by legendary photographers.
In 1962 I got into journalism, writing articles on local events for daily newspapers. For ten cents per column inch and $5 and $3 for news photos from two papers. I got into all this with my usual high energy and in 12 months I was earning more as a part-time freelancer than my dad did at his job, which created a fair bit of family angst, especially envy from my younger brother who had only a $2 weekly allowance.
That year I bought my first enlarger, a massive 4x5 thing from Burke & James in, IRRC, Chicago, delivered by mail order. Also a Yashica D TLR and my first 120 film - Verichrome Pan. Fifty cents a roll, $10 for a brick. Yep, them good old days.
I did weddings, babies, local news events and landscapes, printed on Kodabromide processed in Dektol, all we had then came from Kodak or Ansco, with a few rarities like Varigam from DuPont, Ilford being reserved for those elitist photographers in faraway exotic places like Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver. I did a lot of news photography and some art work which I sold by mail order to American buyers. A collector from Arizona bought a few dozen 8x10s and 11x14s, all chocolate-boxy fishing scenes taken in eastern Canada. To this day I wonder how many of my early work has survived. A museum also acquired images of historical interest, paying very little for them.
A few hundred ancient negatives have survived. For VP developed in DK60a, they enlarge surprisingly well.
That year I was sent (= forced) to a boarding school, supposedly to improve my academic standing but really to instill 'discipline' my step mom was convinced I needed. She was conformist and anxious and neurotically religious, and it severely upset her when neighbors said I was "different" from my school peers who were into sports, parties and dancing on weekends and being popular with their Alpha Male mates and of course girls. While I read books, wrote news items and articles, took long walks with my camera, and did generally solitary things. In 1960s French Canada to be "different" was akin to residing on an alien planet.
At the school I went on doing photography (to a lesser extent) and had a makeshift darkroom, A teacher had an Exakta which he kindly loaned me. I had my Yashica TLR and I developed but couldn't print my films. For three years I hated my teachers and my fellow students and the, to me, stultifying regime. I considered my boarding school years as a prison sentence, but I now realize how open-minded and progressive some of my teachers were. And I accept my time there prepared me for a more worldly adulthood, a lifelong wish to always improve myself, and travel.
In 1965 I got into full-time journalism. My first job as a new reporter paid CDN $35 a 40+ hour week. I did all but sports which I was no good at, whether playing or writing. After 15 difficult months (by which time I earned $45) I moved on to a better paying news job. Photography added to my work salary, mostly from weddings which (I happily gave up doing in 1967) and studio work which I did at home with one stand of old style Photofloods and a Metz electronic flash unit.
My cameras came and went. A Yashica D, then an A, later a '35 which I liked as it took 120 and 35mm film. In 1966 I got a new Rolleiflex 3.5E2, ordered by our local dentist who passed away before it was delivered. I paid CDN $195 for it (the widow kindly gifted me the deposit), a fortune at that time. I still have this Rollei, rarely used but part of my history.
This will suffice for now. I will go on in a future episode.
Others please join in with your own photo histories. As we know, almost everything has changed since the '60s. This may be an interesting and educational thread.
Last edited:
Godfrey
somewhat colored
Okay, you asked.
I was interested in cameras and pictures from when I was very young. My father got me a Kodak Brownie Starmite when I was about five ... still have some photos from that ... and also from the Instamatic 300 that followed it. I bought myself a Minolta 16Ps when I was 11, then my grandfather handed me his 1949 Rolleiflex when I started High School, and my mom gave me her Argus C3 shortly after that. The next big leap happened a year later when my uncle helped me buy a Nikon F Photomic FTn. My part of that was my entire Summer savings from the odd jobs I had... about $112 ...
We had a darkroom in the basement of the house that my father and my uncle had used... it became my special place when I was 12. I never had much money, allowances being what they were then ($5 per week from my dad, and a few dollars a week made from my paperboy delivery job), so the biggest challenge was finding money to buy film, paper, chemistry.
Somewhere in that time I started going down to my father's office ... he was a dentist ... and I was his photographic staff. Ran the X-Ray machine, processed the plates, etc. That made me a couple of dollars a week. My other uncle loaned me a Nikkor 85m and 21mm lens for a long while. I scrimped and saved, bought some cheap 200mm telephoto so I could photograph the football games for the high school photo staff. Another round of savings and I had $100 ... then blew it all when a fed-up salesman at one of the big photo stores in Manhattan got tired of me drooling on the counter looking at all the old Leicas and other cameras. "Kid, are you ever going to buy anything?" I put my $100 on the counter and wondered if I could get a working Leica. He laughed, pulled out a beat up IIc, IIf, and Elmar 50, 35 ... it was 1969-1970 ... "Nobody wants this old junk any more. Keep $5 so you can take the train home, and get out of here!" And then I couldn't afford any film.
Which changed two weeks later. I got home from school and walked into the darkroom after I finished my homework ... or opened the darkroom door and couldn't get inside, it was stuffed full of stuff. Turns out my uncle had an elderly photographer as a customer in his store and the old man had been told he wasn't going to live much longer, his battle with cancer was going against him. The old man told my uncle and asked him if he knew anyone who might want his old darkroom junk. There were dozens of boxes of paper, tins of 100' bulk 35mm film, a few years worth of chemistry, an enlarger, a stabilization processor, tanks, trays, you name it. I was set! I had the motherlode of consumables at hand, gave film and paper to my friends (I'd never use it all!) and spent all my spare time at school taking pictures and at home processing and printing.
I did portraits, group shots, sports, faculty, and events at school for the yearbook and the newspaper. I wandered around the Bronx and Manhattan snapping pictures of people on the streets, and making little books of photos that I gave away. Some kids in Harlem saw me walking about with a fancy camera at one point and accosted me ... "What you takin' pictures of?" they said, looking like they were going to beat me up and steal the camera. "You and your friends!" I said, and I handed each of them one of my little photo booklets. They didn't beat me up, they adopted me and then took me to see their friends and families, who I photographed. I was the only white kid in the neighborhood, and all my friends thought I was crazy to go walking in "those places" alone with a camera, but I was perfectly safe and they were my friends, protecting me and showing me things, people that no other white kids could ever see. I made dozens of little portrait books for them ... I wonder if any of them still exist, these 60 years on.
High school ended, I went to college and worked in a photo shop evenings to pay my way. Quit college after three years ... I was bored ... and learned to do mechanics, hung out at the race track on weekends. Spent a lot of time photographing the cars and motorcycles, the events, the riders, and their families and friends. I gave most of my pictures away, they took care of me in return.
I went back to school, took the leap and loaded up a van with everything I owned and went to school in California. I wandered through majors again, getting bored, and finally stuck with Mathematics because it was difficult. Yeah: I had a problem with most courses other than that because I had a very very good memory at that time. I rarely had to study anything in literature or science because I just remembered what the book said and wrote it down on the test, but with Math I had to work and do the proof, work the equations, understand the concepts. I loved it ... finally learning something and not just parroting back what was already written!
I continued to shoot photos ... graduated, didn't leave town, took a job in a photo shop and did photography in my free time. I hung a couple of shows. And then I got tired of the small town, packed everything up in a friend's garage, put my essential into a bag, and headed off on a motorcycle. My camera was with me. I wandered across the USA and into Canada for a month and some, ended up in NY again for a Summer and took odd jobs to raise some money. I have pictures from all across the northern part of the USA still, and many many memories of adventures and people. But NY wasn't where I wanted to be ... I headed out in September, south and then west. Wandered the coast and the eastern hills, nipped through the South and New Orleans. Pounding West, I stopped near Dallas for a couple of days, sick with fever, and a friend of a friend put me up in her house for that. I visited an old friend from NY who'd moved to the middle of Texas for a couple of weeks, photographed the area, his friends, and had many adventures there. Then one of his buddies decided to ride further West with me, and we rode across Texas and dipped south into Mexico at Big Bend ... Ended up for the night at Aldamo near Chihuahua. I woke at 5am the next day, and I was spooked. "George, I have to get back to California. As fast as I can!..." and he got up and we pounded through Chihuahua, then north to El Paso and the USA.
I rode west when he went east, wandered through Carlsbad, NM, and up through the flatlands to Albuquerque where one of my uncles had moved. HUGE storm practically drowned me on that leg, and I got to my uncle's place with fever again, spent a week recovering. Yes, I have photos of that ride, of the storm rising into the sky like a cobra preparing to strike. I left my uncle's place and burned west, west to California again. One of my friends from college had moved to go back to school at Caltech so I went to Pasadena and flopped in the house where he was renting a room. Danny had a part-time job at JPL, he said, "You need money, right?" I nodded, he introduced me to the department manager. A month later I was hired on the strength of my degree in Math and my knowledge of Photography. I spent four years there, learning all kinds of stuff and doing digital imaging in its pre-juvenile days, learning how radar imaging systems worked and learning computers and computer languages, writing software ... and taking pictures for myself as well.
Four years later, I was ready to move again and headed north to San Francisco, took a job at a company writing database software for chemical engineers. Two years after that, an opportunity came up with Apple that a friend from JPL called me for, and I went to work at Apple. And I kept on taking photos, making little books and giving them away. I took off for Sun Micro for two years, then went back to Apple for another five or so. Then I was laid off.
I took contracting jobs and started my own photo business. Assignments for events, portraits, and sales for book and magazine publications. Everything looked like it was going great .. in early 2008. Then the Great Recession happened: in April, every job I'd booked for the next year disappeared, along with the companies. I went broke, and was deep in debt from having used up all my credit putting together the equipment and supplies needed to do the business. Along the way, I'd managed to get in with my partner and he loaned me survival money for a time. I had to find work again, and no one was hiring.
Until I ran into an old friend from Apple and he was looking for a contractor to do a book revision project. I jumped for it, not knowing if I could do it as I'd never been a tech writer before. It went well, to my astonishment. Meanwhile, my dead photography business woke up a little and I entered a few exhibitions, competitions ... won a couple of awards and recognition. And then the offer from Apple to become a full-time writer happened, and I took it realizing this was my last shot to build up some money for retirement — because I was now 57 and mostly dead broke most of the time, photography was great but wasn't very big on paying the rent.
So I took the job, and worked at it. And bought into all the retirement things I could, put more than half my take-home into buying stock and retirement chips. And I kept doing photography as I could find time for. And I got sick from all the stress and work, needed a couple of stretches of medical leave, but hung on until my stock was all vested...
And then I retired. And I do my photography to suit myself, to make the little books and stories that I like to see, and to remember all the fun, all the craziness and good times and crazy people, and wild trips, and all the great equipment that I'd had the fun of playing with, and all the interesting jobs and airplane rides, and ... and ... and ... I got much healthier, got back on the bicycles, and everything was going great.
And then The Calamity happened last Fall ... I was hit by a car and nearly killed. Broke my shoulder very badly, smashed my legs. And I've fought my way every day since to get back to where I was. And astonished my orthopedic surgeon ... "I don't know how it is that you have recovered 98% of your range of motion, of your strength and dexterity, in only five months. You're further along than any other of my patients your age have gotten to in a year. What's your secret?"
"I declared myself Eternal, doc. And as long as it lasts, I'll fight with every erg I can muster to stay that way. And when I die, well, I'll never know I wasn't really Eternal, but eh? who cares at that point?" And he laughed his head off—"Whatever the secret, keep doing it! You're done here, there's nothing more I can do for you at present."
It does not end until my Time stops. I'll be seventy next week. I hope to be around and hale for a decade or so more, if Luck is willing. And I keep making photographs that satisfy me, and maybe others might like a couple of them too.
G
I was interested in cameras and pictures from when I was very young. My father got me a Kodak Brownie Starmite when I was about five ... still have some photos from that ... and also from the Instamatic 300 that followed it. I bought myself a Minolta 16Ps when I was 11, then my grandfather handed me his 1949 Rolleiflex when I started High School, and my mom gave me her Argus C3 shortly after that. The next big leap happened a year later when my uncle helped me buy a Nikon F Photomic FTn. My part of that was my entire Summer savings from the odd jobs I had... about $112 ...
We had a darkroom in the basement of the house that my father and my uncle had used... it became my special place when I was 12. I never had much money, allowances being what they were then ($5 per week from my dad, and a few dollars a week made from my paperboy delivery job), so the biggest challenge was finding money to buy film, paper, chemistry.
Somewhere in that time I started going down to my father's office ... he was a dentist ... and I was his photographic staff. Ran the X-Ray machine, processed the plates, etc. That made me a couple of dollars a week. My other uncle loaned me a Nikkor 85m and 21mm lens for a long while. I scrimped and saved, bought some cheap 200mm telephoto so I could photograph the football games for the high school photo staff. Another round of savings and I had $100 ... then blew it all when a fed-up salesman at one of the big photo stores in Manhattan got tired of me drooling on the counter looking at all the old Leicas and other cameras. "Kid, are you ever going to buy anything?" I put my $100 on the counter and wondered if I could get a working Leica. He laughed, pulled out a beat up IIc, IIf, and Elmar 50, 35 ... it was 1969-1970 ... "Nobody wants this old junk any more. Keep $5 so you can take the train home, and get out of here!" And then I couldn't afford any film.
Which changed two weeks later. I got home from school and walked into the darkroom after I finished my homework ... or opened the darkroom door and couldn't get inside, it was stuffed full of stuff. Turns out my uncle had an elderly photographer as a customer in his store and the old man had been told he wasn't going to live much longer, his battle with cancer was going against him. The old man told my uncle and asked him if he knew anyone who might want his old darkroom junk. There were dozens of boxes of paper, tins of 100' bulk 35mm film, a few years worth of chemistry, an enlarger, a stabilization processor, tanks, trays, you name it. I was set! I had the motherlode of consumables at hand, gave film and paper to my friends (I'd never use it all!) and spent all my spare time at school taking pictures and at home processing and printing.
I did portraits, group shots, sports, faculty, and events at school for the yearbook and the newspaper. I wandered around the Bronx and Manhattan snapping pictures of people on the streets, and making little books of photos that I gave away. Some kids in Harlem saw me walking about with a fancy camera at one point and accosted me ... "What you takin' pictures of?" they said, looking like they were going to beat me up and steal the camera. "You and your friends!" I said, and I handed each of them one of my little photo booklets. They didn't beat me up, they adopted me and then took me to see their friends and families, who I photographed. I was the only white kid in the neighborhood, and all my friends thought I was crazy to go walking in "those places" alone with a camera, but I was perfectly safe and they were my friends, protecting me and showing me things, people that no other white kids could ever see. I made dozens of little portrait books for them ... I wonder if any of them still exist, these 60 years on.
High school ended, I went to college and worked in a photo shop evenings to pay my way. Quit college after three years ... I was bored ... and learned to do mechanics, hung out at the race track on weekends. Spent a lot of time photographing the cars and motorcycles, the events, the riders, and their families and friends. I gave most of my pictures away, they took care of me in return.
I went back to school, took the leap and loaded up a van with everything I owned and went to school in California. I wandered through majors again, getting bored, and finally stuck with Mathematics because it was difficult. Yeah: I had a problem with most courses other than that because I had a very very good memory at that time. I rarely had to study anything in literature or science because I just remembered what the book said and wrote it down on the test, but with Math I had to work and do the proof, work the equations, understand the concepts. I loved it ... finally learning something and not just parroting back what was already written!
I continued to shoot photos ... graduated, didn't leave town, took a job in a photo shop and did photography in my free time. I hung a couple of shows. And then I got tired of the small town, packed everything up in a friend's garage, put my essential into a bag, and headed off on a motorcycle. My camera was with me. I wandered across the USA and into Canada for a month and some, ended up in NY again for a Summer and took odd jobs to raise some money. I have pictures from all across the northern part of the USA still, and many many memories of adventures and people. But NY wasn't where I wanted to be ... I headed out in September, south and then west. Wandered the coast and the eastern hills, nipped through the South and New Orleans. Pounding West, I stopped near Dallas for a couple of days, sick with fever, and a friend of a friend put me up in her house for that. I visited an old friend from NY who'd moved to the middle of Texas for a couple of weeks, photographed the area, his friends, and had many adventures there. Then one of his buddies decided to ride further West with me, and we rode across Texas and dipped south into Mexico at Big Bend ... Ended up for the night at Aldamo near Chihuahua. I woke at 5am the next day, and I was spooked. "George, I have to get back to California. As fast as I can!..." and he got up and we pounded through Chihuahua, then north to El Paso and the USA.
I rode west when he went east, wandered through Carlsbad, NM, and up through the flatlands to Albuquerque where one of my uncles had moved. HUGE storm practically drowned me on that leg, and I got to my uncle's place with fever again, spent a week recovering. Yes, I have photos of that ride, of the storm rising into the sky like a cobra preparing to strike. I left my uncle's place and burned west, west to California again. One of my friends from college had moved to go back to school at Caltech so I went to Pasadena and flopped in the house where he was renting a room. Danny had a part-time job at JPL, he said, "You need money, right?" I nodded, he introduced me to the department manager. A month later I was hired on the strength of my degree in Math and my knowledge of Photography. I spent four years there, learning all kinds of stuff and doing digital imaging in its pre-juvenile days, learning how radar imaging systems worked and learning computers and computer languages, writing software ... and taking pictures for myself as well.
Four years later, I was ready to move again and headed north to San Francisco, took a job at a company writing database software for chemical engineers. Two years after that, an opportunity came up with Apple that a friend from JPL called me for, and I went to work at Apple. And I kept on taking photos, making little books and giving them away. I took off for Sun Micro for two years, then went back to Apple for another five or so. Then I was laid off.
I took contracting jobs and started my own photo business. Assignments for events, portraits, and sales for book and magazine publications. Everything looked like it was going great .. in early 2008. Then the Great Recession happened: in April, every job I'd booked for the next year disappeared, along with the companies. I went broke, and was deep in debt from having used up all my credit putting together the equipment and supplies needed to do the business. Along the way, I'd managed to get in with my partner and he loaned me survival money for a time. I had to find work again, and no one was hiring.
Until I ran into an old friend from Apple and he was looking for a contractor to do a book revision project. I jumped for it, not knowing if I could do it as I'd never been a tech writer before. It went well, to my astonishment. Meanwhile, my dead photography business woke up a little and I entered a few exhibitions, competitions ... won a couple of awards and recognition. And then the offer from Apple to become a full-time writer happened, and I took it realizing this was my last shot to build up some money for retirement — because I was now 57 and mostly dead broke most of the time, photography was great but wasn't very big on paying the rent.
So I took the job, and worked at it. And bought into all the retirement things I could, put more than half my take-home into buying stock and retirement chips. And I kept doing photography as I could find time for. And I got sick from all the stress and work, needed a couple of stretches of medical leave, but hung on until my stock was all vested...
And then I retired. And I do my photography to suit myself, to make the little books and stories that I like to see, and to remember all the fun, all the craziness and good times and crazy people, and wild trips, and all the great equipment that I'd had the fun of playing with, and all the interesting jobs and airplane rides, and ... and ... and ... I got much healthier, got back on the bicycles, and everything was going great.
And then The Calamity happened last Fall ... I was hit by a car and nearly killed. Broke my shoulder very badly, smashed my legs. And I've fought my way every day since to get back to where I was. And astonished my orthopedic surgeon ... "I don't know how it is that you have recovered 98% of your range of motion, of your strength and dexterity, in only five months. You're further along than any other of my patients your age have gotten to in a year. What's your secret?"
"I declared myself Eternal, doc. And as long as it lasts, I'll fight with every erg I can muster to stay that way. And when I die, well, I'll never know I wasn't really Eternal, but eh? who cares at that point?" And he laughed his head off—"Whatever the secret, keep doing it! You're done here, there's nothing more I can do for you at present."
It does not end until my Time stops. I'll be seventy next week. I hope to be around and hale for a decade or so more, if Luck is willing. And I keep making photographs that satisfy me, and maybe others might like a couple of them too.
G
Doug A
Well-known
It changed a lot, but in the end it didn't change much at all. I started taking pictures in 1952 using 127 B&W film with a Kodak Brownie. I am now (2024) taking pictures using 120 B&W film with a Hasselblad. In between, I took B&W and color pictures using 35mm and 120 film and digital with an embarrassing number of cameras ranging in format from 16mm to 4x5.
Tom R
Established
Started in High School, in the early seventies. I recall being influenced a lot by Life Magazine (think Eugene Smith, et al). I worked in the school darkroom and started with 35mm film. I have continued to use only 35mm film because I’m comfortable with the process, and, at the same time, always astonished when I view the processed negatives.
Upon finishing my undergraduate education, I worked some freelance and accumulated additional skills—most notably, how to engage with paying clients, etc. My middle years (post graduate school and career building) were all about balancing real-world needs (i.e., finding a dependable source of income—a career in science, actually) and still finding time to make pictures. During these years, I promised myself that I’d retire to make pictures, and that’s what I did.
Now the kinds of pictures that interest me differ fundamentally from what engaged me during these previous thirty-plus years; I am interested in making pictures about things and less interested in pictures of things—less journalism, more exploration and interrogation of the medium itself. In brief, I’m interested in what photographs can say (and what they cannot say), how they say it, and how to communicate this to an audience. Everything else remains unchanged; I still prefer to work exclusively with 35mm film. I still work within the world as it is given—as opposed to constructing tableaux, etc.
Upon finishing my undergraduate education, I worked some freelance and accumulated additional skills—most notably, how to engage with paying clients, etc. My middle years (post graduate school and career building) were all about balancing real-world needs (i.e., finding a dependable source of income—a career in science, actually) and still finding time to make pictures. During these years, I promised myself that I’d retire to make pictures, and that’s what I did.
Now the kinds of pictures that interest me differ fundamentally from what engaged me during these previous thirty-plus years; I am interested in making pictures about things and less interested in pictures of things—less journalism, more exploration and interrogation of the medium itself. In brief, I’m interested in what photographs can say (and what they cannot say), how they say it, and how to communicate this to an audience. Everything else remains unchanged; I still prefer to work exclusively with 35mm film. I still work within the world as it is given—as opposed to constructing tableaux, etc.
Ko.Fe.
Lenses 35/21 Gears 46/20
Never earned money from photography. Even if I been offered to. Neither it was as steady and sufficient income for decades now. Especially in Canada. Where leaving contractors unpaid is municipal and federal practices now. Not to mention the rest...
One of my colleague in Netherlands keeps web site with his photography business open. He does weddings once in a while.
I'm just happy to photograph what I want...
Did darkroom full setup just for curiosity before it became overpriced niche as of now.
One of my colleague in Netherlands keeps web site with his photography business open. He does weddings once in a while.
I'm just happy to photograph what I want...
Did darkroom full setup just for curiosity before it became overpriced niche as of now.
Ororaro
Well-known
All I can say is that I’m getting worst and worst as years go by.
Retro-Grouch
Veteran
I know you're joking (sorta) but we have to be our own most ruthless critics. Otherwise, we don't get better. Our peers are only too willing to give us "likes" when we don't really deserve them.
DownUnder
Nikon Nomad
!!!!! +1000 for this...
You are being much too hard on yourself. Drop "worst and worst" and go with "worse and worse". More leeway here. Hope for the future.
Anyway, me too. Until now I allowed myself only to think it. Now someone else has admitted it, so I can also.
I'm now trying to do more photography of things that move. As opposed to static things like buildings. But as an architect, well. Retired 12 years, but I still visualize everything in grids. Properly verticalled verticals are my worst (not worse) obsession. Ditto things in the foregrounds. If I could somehow auto-eliminate cars from all my images, how perfect my world would be.
Note to self: dream on...
What else? Part 2 of my photo-autobiography is on the way. The first draft has been done and is now lying fallow for a few days. I will then return to it and chisel, chop, cut, hack and obliterate at least half of it. Writing in a more Reader's Digest Condensed style is my latest life project. One should always live in hope.
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JeffS7444
Well-known
My life-with-photography story isn't so eventful as @DownUnder 's or @Godfrey 's: I didn't have a camera to call my own until my middle teen years, and my buddies and I had other priorities, and could often be found prowling the nearby drainage ditches and streams, or at the beach, nets and buckets in hand. Tilapia are super-easy to keep as pets as they will eat just about anything, but gotta keep changing the water in their tank because they're messy. And green mollies are great jumpers! No desire to eat tilapia to this day, but I understand they're loaded with unhealthy Omega-6 fats, so no loss there.
My first photos via my dad's Minox and the Nikon I was eventually gifted with, were just your typical snaps of holidays, graduations, birthdays and the like, plus a precious few of relatives and pets (not my fish, alas) long since departed.
I don't remember exactly what it was that inspired me to photograph everyday subject matter, maybe a college art class, or one of Freeman Patterson's books. Early Leica influence was provided by the owner of a shop that my dad, and later, I, patronized. And whether he realized it or not, he also influenced my idea of how people become wealthy without working particularly hard: He may have inherited land from his parents, but as far as I could tell, having other business build upon the land and pay him rent was his doing. So while he could often be found behind the counter of his own shop, his real job was collecting rent checks. He certainly seemed less stressed than my workaholic dad, and his Porsche was newer, and in better shape, too.
At first I felt self-conscious about taking my camera into the office or around the neighborhood, but came to appreciate the temporary nature of everyday situations: The open neighborhood space since built up, the company which no longer exists, and the coworkers who have gone I-know-not-where: That first battered Leica M was my companion through much of that time. That camera may have lacked the versatility of my Nikon, but the limitations of the M-system, and the sheer cost of lenses, enforced a sort of discipline which I lacked otherwise. Although I sold off the M-cameras and lenses some time ago, I still keep my system Leica-lean.
As I was keenly interested in personal computers, it's only natural that I should have also explored digital imaging, starting with a video digitizer connected to my Mac 512K. But digital photography remained a fun diversion from "real" photography until the mid-aughties, when the Panasonic DMC-LC1 arrived, but that's getting ahead of myself.
Mid-1990s saw me in another line of work, in a different state. But armed with an early consumer digital camera, I was able to take adequate quality photos for use in a mail order catalog. It was a fun, sometimes hectic work environment where the pay wasn't much, but the only dress code was that you had to be clothed. And animals were allowed. It was also an era when stock-market riches were on everyone's mind. Want to know what dumb luck looks like? While I didn't buy Apple stock as my boss kept suggesting, I did invest $1000 into nVidia before the stock was incorporated into the NASDAQ index, because I liked their video cards. And had I held onto it for the next couple of decades, I might be annoyingly smug today. But I did more than okay, and didn't do anything really stupid. At some point, I also purchased shares of Berkshire Hathaway, and I kept those.
Following a period of unemployment (company got sold), fellow Leica fan urged me to take a position with his company, and while the pay wasn't much to write home about, it had a health plan, and the company matched IRA contributions. That was one of my longest-running gigs, and I welcomed the stability. But in another stroke of dumb luck which didn't seem lucky at the time, I found myself unemployed again just prior to the pandemic (this company also got sold!), and decided to transfer funds from my company 401K to my own brokerage account, while I still knew who my company contacts were. I ended up using those funds to buy a decent sized chunk of S&P 500 index funds. Had another old retirement account earning money market rates, and also reinvested those into index funds. And April 2020 turned out to be a pretty good time to be doing exactly that.
Come 2021, I was sitting at home feeling bored and anxious. But I was in less of a mood for shopping, and more in the mood to sell stuff cluttering up my space, including film and digital cameras. And if ever there was a good time to be selling stuff on eBay, mid-2021 was it. If I had grown bored of it, and it could be shipped, chances are, I sold it. A few items fetched "meh" prices, but these were outweighed by more eyebrow-raising sale prices, even a few OMFG ones. And at some point, I logged into my brokerage account to see what had become of my reinvested funds and realized that my net worth had grown faster during my unemployment than it ever had when I was working. "Huh, that's interesting", I thought.
Think my film-scanning and camera-repair skills also improved by leaps and bounds during the pandemic. Part of me will always remember the era fondly for the blue, blue skies, deer roaming the streets, and the days I spent from dawn to dusk, completely absorbed in revisiting those images from years past. So glad that I photographed this era in some detail.
My first photos via my dad's Minox and the Nikon I was eventually gifted with, were just your typical snaps of holidays, graduations, birthdays and the like, plus a precious few of relatives and pets (not my fish, alas) long since departed.
I don't remember exactly what it was that inspired me to photograph everyday subject matter, maybe a college art class, or one of Freeman Patterson's books. Early Leica influence was provided by the owner of a shop that my dad, and later, I, patronized. And whether he realized it or not, he also influenced my idea of how people become wealthy without working particularly hard: He may have inherited land from his parents, but as far as I could tell, having other business build upon the land and pay him rent was his doing. So while he could often be found behind the counter of his own shop, his real job was collecting rent checks. He certainly seemed less stressed than my workaholic dad, and his Porsche was newer, and in better shape, too.
At first I felt self-conscious about taking my camera into the office or around the neighborhood, but came to appreciate the temporary nature of everyday situations: The open neighborhood space since built up, the company which no longer exists, and the coworkers who have gone I-know-not-where: That first battered Leica M was my companion through much of that time. That camera may have lacked the versatility of my Nikon, but the limitations of the M-system, and the sheer cost of lenses, enforced a sort of discipline which I lacked otherwise. Although I sold off the M-cameras and lenses some time ago, I still keep my system Leica-lean.
As I was keenly interested in personal computers, it's only natural that I should have also explored digital imaging, starting with a video digitizer connected to my Mac 512K. But digital photography remained a fun diversion from "real" photography until the mid-aughties, when the Panasonic DMC-LC1 arrived, but that's getting ahead of myself.
Mid-1990s saw me in another line of work, in a different state. But armed with an early consumer digital camera, I was able to take adequate quality photos for use in a mail order catalog. It was a fun, sometimes hectic work environment where the pay wasn't much, but the only dress code was that you had to be clothed. And animals were allowed. It was also an era when stock-market riches were on everyone's mind. Want to know what dumb luck looks like? While I didn't buy Apple stock as my boss kept suggesting, I did invest $1000 into nVidia before the stock was incorporated into the NASDAQ index, because I liked their video cards. And had I held onto it for the next couple of decades, I might be annoyingly smug today. But I did more than okay, and didn't do anything really stupid. At some point, I also purchased shares of Berkshire Hathaway, and I kept those.
Following a period of unemployment (company got sold), fellow Leica fan urged me to take a position with his company, and while the pay wasn't much to write home about, it had a health plan, and the company matched IRA contributions. That was one of my longest-running gigs, and I welcomed the stability. But in another stroke of dumb luck which didn't seem lucky at the time, I found myself unemployed again just prior to the pandemic (this company also got sold!), and decided to transfer funds from my company 401K to my own brokerage account, while I still knew who my company contacts were. I ended up using those funds to buy a decent sized chunk of S&P 500 index funds. Had another old retirement account earning money market rates, and also reinvested those into index funds. And April 2020 turned out to be a pretty good time to be doing exactly that.
Come 2021, I was sitting at home feeling bored and anxious. But I was in less of a mood for shopping, and more in the mood to sell stuff cluttering up my space, including film and digital cameras. And if ever there was a good time to be selling stuff on eBay, mid-2021 was it. If I had grown bored of it, and it could be shipped, chances are, I sold it. A few items fetched "meh" prices, but these were outweighed by more eyebrow-raising sale prices, even a few OMFG ones. And at some point, I logged into my brokerage account to see what had become of my reinvested funds and realized that my net worth had grown faster during my unemployment than it ever had when I was working. "Huh, that's interesting", I thought.
Think my film-scanning and camera-repair skills also improved by leaps and bounds during the pandemic. Part of me will always remember the era fondly for the blue, blue skies, deer roaming the streets, and the days I spent from dawn to dusk, completely absorbed in revisiting those images from years past. So glad that I photographed this era in some detail.
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Freakscene
Obscure member
My photography keeps getting older, like me!
Erik van Straten
Veteran
Photography in general has changed, but I have remained the same. What now?
Richard G
Veteran
I began with an interest in photographic record, of the family, my brothers and me in England till ‘65, an era caught on colour slides and prints and well developed and printed black and whites - and standard 8 movies mostly taken by my father. Looking at these photos as I grew up set the photograph as a powerful bridge to something that was over at a certain point, never to be retrieved. Then in the 70s as a teenager the Kennedy assassinations and other historical disasters caught on film fascinated me. The astonishing public obliteration of a statesman’s head was scarcely believable, yet everyone saw it. Still I photographed my school friends and my family and wider circle of friends. I was arrested at that level for decades, including the crucial early years of our children fortunately, and importantly still using film when most others had switched entirely to digital.
The M6 and 35 Summicron were essential for children darting about, the camera metered, the clear VF and quick RF focussing and fast wide angle to try to get the child, or two, in the frame. The M2 and 50 Summicron returned to duty, recording grand dinners of my professional association, and that continues annually with the Monochrom.
In 2004 the Nikon Coolpix 4500 served as the family camera, great for children with the waist level viewing, but still an annoying focus lag. The first serious digital was the Fuji X100 in 2011 and then a full-frame Leica digital in 2012. But in those eight years I would take transparencies of the children on our annual holidays each year. It was a roll of Fuji Velvia in the M6 in January 2009 which deepened my intention and skill. It wasn’t just the cost, a dollar a frame. People often worry they may not do justice to using a Leica. That week I was worried about living up to the film. I wanted to exclude the chance of having 36/37 indifferent shots. I tried so much harder, looking for compositions as I recently saw Thomas Heaton say, and I succeeded with four shots of nine on that first walk, and perhaps succeeded also in the shots I did not take.
That was the year I joined RFF. A little earlier, a year or so, one architectural photograph on a bike ride with my son sparked an interest in looking for abstract elements in the built environment. Here on RFF I finally learnt things I should have pursued as a teenager and with the influence and example of so many great members of this forum I developed into a photographer, the definition of which might be, someone who thinks about photography all the time.
The M6 and 35 Summicron were essential for children darting about, the camera metered, the clear VF and quick RF focussing and fast wide angle to try to get the child, or two, in the frame. The M2 and 50 Summicron returned to duty, recording grand dinners of my professional association, and that continues annually with the Monochrom.
In 2004 the Nikon Coolpix 4500 served as the family camera, great for children with the waist level viewing, but still an annoying focus lag. The first serious digital was the Fuji X100 in 2011 and then a full-frame Leica digital in 2012. But in those eight years I would take transparencies of the children on our annual holidays each year. It was a roll of Fuji Velvia in the M6 in January 2009 which deepened my intention and skill. It wasn’t just the cost, a dollar a frame. People often worry they may not do justice to using a Leica. That week I was worried about living up to the film. I wanted to exclude the chance of having 36/37 indifferent shots. I tried so much harder, looking for compositions as I recently saw Thomas Heaton say, and I succeeded with four shots of nine on that first walk, and perhaps succeeded also in the shots I did not take.
That was the year I joined RFF. A little earlier, a year or so, one architectural photograph on a bike ride with my son sparked an interest in looking for abstract elements in the built environment. Here on RFF I finally learnt things I should have pursued as a teenager and with the influence and example of so many great members of this forum I developed into a photographer, the definition of which might be, someone who thinks about photography all the time.
Archiver
Veteran
I've told this story before, but here we go again, with the theme of how my photography has changed over the years.
Photography is an extension of my desire to document my life. My first journals were pocket diaries from when I was five or six, attempting to draw things I had seen in dreams, or the Mr. Magoo Christmas Special that just played on TV.
Dad taught me the basics of photography on his Pentax ME and Minolta SR-T 101, and I played with a 110 cassette camera from Keystone in the mid 80s, taking a few photos of the house and my friends. A few years later, armed with a Kodak disc camera, I took more photos of friends at school, revelling in the ability to capture things.
But then came a complete dearth of photography between 14 and my late twenties. If only I could send myself an Olympus XA2 through a time portal and urge myself to take photos of my final years at school, my time at uni, my first girlfriend, my first job, overseas and interstate trips, crazy late nights with friends who started a heavy metal band. All that, I have nothing from that time period.
It all changed in the early 2000s with my first digital camera, the 4mp Canon S45. It was an utter revelation, being able to take photos without the constraints of development and printing. It began an odyssey of hopping on the tram to wander the streets and take photos, documenting Melbourne and surrounding suburbs. Prompted by this new path, I explored parts of Melbourne I never bothered with, seeing everything with new eyes, the gleaming glass buildings, the worn churches, the souvlaki shops and trams. Every time I went out, my camera went with me.
Birds in the City by Archiver, on Flickr
My camera collection grew after that: the Canon S70, the Casio Z750, the Fuji F30, and then I ventured into the DSLR realm with the Canon 30D. By a stroke of luck, work was branching into media production / photography, so I was suddenly able to be paid to do what I loved. My job became the gathering of photos of touristy destinations in Melbourne and Sydney; I often said that the only things that would make my job better was heavy metal music and strippers.
30D - peering through to see the bridge by Archiver, on Flickr
5D MkII - QVB by Archiver, on Flickr
Photography is an extension of my desire to document my life. My first journals were pocket diaries from when I was five or six, attempting to draw things I had seen in dreams, or the Mr. Magoo Christmas Special that just played on TV.
Dad taught me the basics of photography on his Pentax ME and Minolta SR-T 101, and I played with a 110 cassette camera from Keystone in the mid 80s, taking a few photos of the house and my friends. A few years later, armed with a Kodak disc camera, I took more photos of friends at school, revelling in the ability to capture things.
But then came a complete dearth of photography between 14 and my late twenties. If only I could send myself an Olympus XA2 through a time portal and urge myself to take photos of my final years at school, my time at uni, my first girlfriend, my first job, overseas and interstate trips, crazy late nights with friends who started a heavy metal band. All that, I have nothing from that time period.
It all changed in the early 2000s with my first digital camera, the 4mp Canon S45. It was an utter revelation, being able to take photos without the constraints of development and printing. It began an odyssey of hopping on the tram to wander the streets and take photos, documenting Melbourne and surrounding suburbs. Prompted by this new path, I explored parts of Melbourne I never bothered with, seeing everything with new eyes, the gleaming glass buildings, the worn churches, the souvlaki shops and trams. Every time I went out, my camera went with me.
Birds in the City by Archiver, on FlickrMy camera collection grew after that: the Canon S70, the Casio Z750, the Fuji F30, and then I ventured into the DSLR realm with the Canon 30D. By a stroke of luck, work was branching into media production / photography, so I was suddenly able to be paid to do what I loved. My job became the gathering of photos of touristy destinations in Melbourne and Sydney; I often said that the only things that would make my job better was heavy metal music and strippers.
30D - peering through to see the bridge by Archiver, on Flickr5D MkII - QVB by Archiver, on FlickrArchiver
Veteran
My paid work evolved from landscape and cityscapes toward people and products, as as my gear improved, my expectations increased, too. I became fed up with the weight of a heavy DSLR and moved to the Leica M9, which was another revelation. Full frame and vastly superior image quality with lenses that I only dreamed of ten years before, in a package that fit into a small shoulder bag.
M9 + ZM 25/2.8 - Town Hall by Archiver, on Flickr
M9 - The Lake of Trees by Archiver, on Flickr
Spurred by the desire for a camera I could shoot in the rain, I bought an Olympus E-M5, which set me back on the path of small cameras. I still shoot with micro four thirds for much of my paid and personal work now.
GH3 - All we like sheep by Archiver, on Flickr
M9 + ZM 25/2.8 - Town Hall by Archiver, on FlickrM9 - The Lake of Trees by Archiver, on FlickrSpurred by the desire for a camera I could shoot in the rain, I bought an Olympus E-M5, which set me back on the path of small cameras. I still shoot with micro four thirds for much of my paid and personal work now.
GH3 - All we like sheep by Archiver, on FlickrArchiver
Veteran
My personal photography continued as the documentation of my life, but with the intention of being a little artistic. I became obsessed with HCB, Elliott Erwitt, Daido Moriyama and Mary Ellen Mark.
M9 + 50/2 - Two and a Half Women by Archiver, on Flickr
M9 - A bit of the old Daido by Archiver, on Flickr
Over time, I've been able to bring documentation and a bit of artistry together. My paid work is for sports brands and organizations, and my personal work overlaps somewhat. I shoot small mirrorless cameras like the Panasonic S5 and G9 for work, and the Leica M9 and Panasonic GX85 for myself.
M9 - The Faceless by Archiver, on Flickr
M9 + 50/2 - Two and a Half Women by Archiver, on FlickrM9 - A bit of the old Daido by Archiver, on FlickrOver time, I've been able to bring documentation and a bit of artistry together. My paid work is for sports brands and organizations, and my personal work overlaps somewhat. I shoot small mirrorless cameras like the Panasonic S5 and G9 for work, and the Leica M9 and Panasonic GX85 for myself.
M9 - The Faceless by Archiver, on Flickr
Joao
Negativistic forever
As in Big Joe Shelton's song,
"The Older I Get, the Better I Was"
"The Older I Get, the Better I Was"
boojum
Ignoble Miscreant
I started in '47 or '48 with a Bay Brownie. In '50 I was doing darkroom developing and printing and the occasional enlargement. It was mostly contact prints and not a lot of them either. By '53 or '54 I had the Voigtländer Vito II pictured at left and was using a bulk loader to keep up with my appetite for shooting. I would spend all of Saturday and/or Sunday in a big, dark room lighted with a couple of red light bulbs and watch eight to ten hours just disappear.
I have fiddled around with it off and on since. And in the last few years I have taken it up again. It is fun. I hope I am getting better but really wonder. For money? Really? I can't find anyone to pay. But there's plenty who will take my money. ;o)
I have fiddled around with it off and on since. And in the last few years I have taken it up again. It is fun. I hope I am getting better but really wonder. For money? Really? I can't find anyone to pay. But there's plenty who will take my money. ;o)
trix4ever
Well-known
It's got more expensive and more complicated, I often wonder if like Michael Kenna I'd just kept using the same gear and process for the last 50 years I would have been better off?
Artistically I mean, not just financially.
Artistically I mean, not just financially.
Archiver
Veteran
If you found gear and a process you liked, and it gave you the artistic results you wanted, then why not? Jane Bown used an Olympus SLR and a 50 and 80 for most of her photographic career. It suited her, and she stayed with it. Of course, modern advancements make life easier, but they also bring the slippery slope of chasing technological improvements.
wlewisiii
Just another hotel clerk
I have always had a taste for old buildings, trees, landscapes and the like. From the time I bought my first Canon AE-1 at the PX in Germany in 1983 till now that kind of landscape photography is what I've concentrated on. I've slowly developed what I think of as my personal style at it and you can see some of it in my sonnar shot a day thread or Raid's "Images you like" thread. You may or may not care for it but after close to 40 years of banging my head against those trees and walls, I've become reasonably satisfied with my occasional keepers.
8/10/24 in the sonnar thread for example.
8/10/24 in the sonnar thread for example.