If I knew then what I know now...

[FrankS]

I remember in high school there was a camera club, but some really nerdy kids were in it and my interest in photography had not developed yet. (oldest photography pun going!) There was this one guy that I remember feeling really disgusted by, who was rumoured to have taken pictures of his girlfriend, tied up and possibly not fully dressed, using an old Rolleiflex. Enough said!

Some non-photography examples of this include those many times in high school when the girl was obviously willing and I didn't have a clue, or was too shy. There was also a time when I could have bought a 1957 Chev with the (now) famous 283 c.i. motor for $250 but that was too much money at the time for a kid still in elementary school.

 

[bmattock]

I'll let you in on a little secret. OK, so now ever buddy knows it. I was in the photography club in high school. In fact, it was a twenty-some-odd-year hiatus that I just ended a year or two ago (I graduated in '79, do the math).

I was the one who had to try all the artsy stuff. Shot exclusively Tri-X and pushed it to ungodly ASA. Did 'solarization' and Man Ray stuff. Got crazy with the enlargements and the new resin-coated paper and poly-contrast and all that. Even experimented with developers.

Took a great available light photo of myself in my bedroom at night - I had been doing the working out with weights thing as well and was kinda buff, looking back on it. I *thought* it was a photo of myself with my shirt off.

I should have checked that neg more closely.

I was working with a female student and friend (just a friend) who was also doing some enlarging and printing in the darkroom at school when she saw what I was doing an 8x10 of. She asked me if I really intended that.

I *still* did not see what she was looking at. I thought it was just me with my shirt off. I was nonchalant about it - sure, that's what I wanted. This was in '78 or so - no American kid was casual about nudity then. We were all very uptight then.

Well. she got the strangest look on her face and walked out of the darkroom. I never knew until a year later what happened, but my reputation was made on campus from that day forward.

A year later, I was clearing out my stuff from the darkroom prior to graduating and I came across that old 8x10. I took a closer look. Oh, dear God. How did I miss that? (No jokes, please) I mean, there I was, just, um, hanging out. In all my glory. And the photo had been in my cubby in the communal school darkroom all year - and everyone had seen it. And no one had told me - they just must have assumed (as I would have) that I *knew* what was in the frame besides my manly chest. I just about crawled out of there.

I told a good friend of mine who was also into photography (but he was also all-state wrestling, nobody thought he was a 'geek' anything) and he thought I was full of it - I *had* to know what I had done. He thought it was the coolest thing I had ever done - every girl in school apparently knew me as the "Denver Dangler" and he could not accept that it was an accident - and that I missed it when printing the neg. I had never even heard about the nickname.

Well, that's my photo club story.

As to girlfriends, I did ok. As to cars, I had a 1969 Dodge Charger with a 440. But not in high school, I bought it in California in 1981. In high school it was a 1972 Chevy Vega I bought for $100.

Best Regards,

Bill Mattocks

 

[FrankS]

Cool ! Let's hear some more.

 

[Oldprof]

Geez, if I could take my current level of knowledge and go back and relive my life ... I could avoid a lot of very painful mistakes! 😀

But something tells me that even with that knowledge I might make different and equally painful mistakes. Life is a marathon and we are rarely in total control of our circumstances. Most of us take quite a few lumps along the way. I just hope to learn from my mistakes and avoid them in the future. I think they call that "wisdom."

 

[back alley]

not much into photography in school. i started to get interested around 1970/71. looking back i was still a pup, only 20 or so.
i have been shooting, on & off, ever since.

as far as being nerdy, well, i was in the chess club and the political science club in high school - by university i had graduated into drinking and partying and was lucky to get out alive.

joe

 

[rover]

I was your normal dorky teen, no real AV or photography club baggage with me.

I did have some beat cars though.

1973 red Chevy Vega, free from my grandfather. A basketball hit it once and a body panel fell off. When we went to hockey games parking was so tight, if I could only fit the nose into the space, we would get out, lift up the rear end and walk it in.

1973 Ford Torino, free, abandonded at a gas station. We tuned the engine so well you couldn't hear it at all when it was running. The Leica of automobiledome. The body was good from the front of the wheel wells back. Ahead of that, forget it. It had no front bumper so we bolted a 2x8 to the frame. Hey, it was much less intimidating that way than it was when I drove it around with the two "I-beams" sticking out the front.

1968 Pontiac Ventura, free from under a tree on a farm in town. It actually had a solid body. Big boat of a car, the owner bought a new one so parked it in the field and left it.

1974 Mercury Montigo, really really cheap and really really fast. Another solid car. Speedometer and gas gauge didn't work. Dad got rid of this one quickly.

There was a beat up Plymouth Duster in there too, slant six and tons of mechanical problems.

 

[wierdcollector]

In high school I was on the honor roll and graduated in the top ten in our school. Pretty nerdy, though not much of a photographer. As far as cars go, I had a '64 Rambler with 327/3 speed Hurst, then '69 Mach 1 with 390/4 speed Hurst, then 10 more cars in the next 8 years. More of a car guy then camera guy back then till I got married. The cars I missed for next to nothing? A 1970 GTO Judge convertible with 455 Ram Air lV for $1500, a 1967 Mustang with 289, low miles for $1000, a 1968 Firebird convertible with Ram Air 400 for $800, 2 Datsun (pre-nissan) Fairlady roadsters for $1000 each, the list goes on and on. A friend bought a 1967 Corvette convertible with 427, 4 speed, 3 2 barrel carbs and aluminum wheels wrecked for $2000. We kidded him mercilessly for several years till he lost interest in fixing it up and sold it for $6000. Try searching for one of those now, close to $60-100,000 depending on the shape. Twenty-twenty hindsight.

 

[Honu-Hugger]

I'm a little hesitant to dredge all of this back up😉 Fortunately my Dad picked up his interest in photography from his father and darkrooms seemed commonplace in our family. I was nine or ten when he probably gave up trying to keep me out of his, and today appreciate the early introduction to photography and the processes. My late uncle Gordon also was a significant influence; he spent his entire career at Eastman Kodak. I forget his title, but he briefly explained once that his job was to take consumer film products from R&D and see them through to manufacturing -- it was cool as a kid because I was telling my friends (who did not believe me at the time) about T-Max crystal technology at least a year before it ever broke in the popular press, and long before it was available for retail. It doesn't sound like much now, but at the time T-Max film was a pretty big deal.

High school was a little strange: I was a 4.0 student all through school until my Senior year, then I got either 0 points or 4's...still can not explain it except perhaps for being a "Rebel without a Clue?" Anti-war and anti-Nixon were popular positions then; I went against the grain on both fronts. It did not matter to me whether or not we should have been in Viet Nam, the fact was we were there and neither Nixon nor the soldiers serving had put us there: Kennedy did and Johnson escalated it. And yet Kennedy remained a hero, Johnson escaped nonplussed, and Nixon took all of the blame. My best friend and I were the only ones in our school that proudly wore American flags stitched to our jean jackets (uniform of the day) -- we supported the troops and believed strongly in winning any war America was engaged in. The liberals at the time were like Lemmings and I was disgusted by their blind ignorance.

We got a photography class started my Sophomore year. Our school did not have one at the time so a friend and I spoke to the principal about it and the unfortunate Graphic Arts teacher got the duty (poor guy didn't know a thing about photography). One of the guys had a Nikon S(?) which was really cool -- I could not talk him into selling or trading it (the RF thing was already taking hold😉 ) in spite of my best efforts. Otherwise, the photography class was pretty much a "free" credit -- a couple of us ran it for the teacher but didn't really learn anything new (except how to scam a credit and an hour of free time everyday -- probably a good life lesson😀 ) During my Senior year I took a three hour block course called Community Involvement and I elected to contribute my "photography" to the community -- another good scam, better than the first because it amounted to three free hours out of the school day, and great chicks were in the class! Some good did come of it: I was asked to photograph the then new "Title Nine" program as it applied to our area schools. The "official" photographer for the school system (an accomplished adult) was doing the work with a single flash and his shots were horrible. I pushed Tri-X and did them as available light and ended up taking his job! Not so much what I did, more due to the fact of what he didn't do -- his direct flash shots were just painful to look at. My first published pictures!

Cars: man, I couldn't even get in the game at our high school. My group of friends had between them a Pantera, three Corvettes, Lotus Europa, a couple Hurst Olds, Chevelle 454 LS6, 340 'Cuda, Mustang Mach1 and a Boss, and the son of the Mercedes/Porsche dealer just drove whatever he felt like between the two marques (he especially liked a medium sized Merc sedan that had their biggest engine -- it was a great "sleeper" that we blew away 'vettes with). The Pantera was without a doubt the boss vehicle of it's day, though. Me? I had a lowly little MG Midget. I always have liked sports cars, never went for big American Muscle -- loved them but for whatever reason they always elluded me. However, boats are big in Michigan and I did put a 429 SCJ in our boat a little later in life -- it rocked!

I got the partying out of my system early (Senior year of high school) and remember making a very conscious and deliberate decision before entering college. I actually took a drive and had a "conversation" with myself; it was either going to be serious study in college or I was not going to go and was going to either enlist in the Navy or work in construction. I decided to go to college and graduated with just under a 3.9 gp (Michigan State, Construction Management). Photography remained an interest: bought my first Nikon then (couldn't afford extra lenses for the Alpa that my Dad gave me when I was a teenager, and was too much of an "adult" to continue mooching his). I took some of my best pictures then because I was too young and dumb to know better -- I just went out and did it! The Miller Brewing Company bought a shot of their first turbine powered Unlimited Hydro racing in Detroit and a sailing magazine published some of my shots fairly regularly -- all done with a cheap Nikkor zoom! It's not really the gear that matters, it will always be the shot.

Then I pretty much gravitated away from photography until about four or five years ago. Believe it or not this list has really provided more of an incentive to go shoot than anything else. The environment here seems unique to me in that respect, and I love it. I'm getting to ready to go out again today.

Good light to all,

D2

 

[Pherdinand]

🙂 nice stories.
I don't have too many to tell myself...
In fact, in school at age 12 or such, I had a friend with a photographer father, who had "lots of cameras"(five or such). He did his best work with a zenit SLR and a Seagull TLR (4x4 format). Our family camera was a dumb little smena-8 (lomo product), guess-focusing, guess-exposure, guess-everything, with an f/4 lens (40mm i think), shutter f/15 to f/250. Sometimes i made some photos, but not much, maybe one BW roll in two months...

Once however, this friend of mine gave me a camera of his father to try out, for a week. It was a Fed (1 or 2 or dunno). PITA bottom-loading, io needed a day to figure out how to do it, and had a collapsible Industar which I had no idea why is collapsible and how I should use it - collapsed or pulled out😀
My friend had no idea neither. So i made half of the photos when it was collapsed. Result was a very cool image circle on the neg with some blurry stuff inside; the guy at the lab asked me twice with a very sorry-face, if i really want "enlargements" (6x9cm format...)
however, i made a few frames of closeup subjects too, collapsed, and they turned out in focus! If i remember correctly, i figured out that the 50mm lens collapsed should be at about 50mm distance from the subject(???) that was,some postage stamp, a dead fly, etc. My first macro experiences.

He wanted to sell me the Fed, but i had no cash to get it. It had a faster lens, a faster shutter too, than our smena. His father, of course, had no idea about the business🙂

Oh, and i did not know about the rangefinder mechanism. I just focused in the same way, guessing the distance. 😀

 

[GeneW]

There were two things I really wanted in the mid 60's. One was a Martin D-28 guitar ($400) and the other was a Leica (don't recall the exact price). I kept thinking one day I could afford them. As my income grew, so did the price of these items and they always stayed just out of reach. But I really shoulda anted up for that Martin D-28 when it was $400! 😉

Gene

 

[nwcanonman]

FrankS,
I bought my 57' Chev wagon for $175 and sold it a year later for $200.... man to have back now! The 283 was good, but the early hydro-matic tranny leaked like a sieve. Sure was fun taking pics of it, wish I still had one from back then.

 

[Doug]

My small high school didn't have much in the way of clubs. I was in National Honor Society, finally qualifying in my senior year. I played sax in the dance band and clarinet in the marching band. I think there was a debating club.

The only photo-related stuff I remember was that the chemistry teacher and the senior math teacher conspired to create some fake flying saucer pictures. I think they were trying their hand at duplicating published UFO pics to demonstrate to themselves how it could be done. They were receiving a periodical magazine published by some group located in Joshua Tree CA. There were first-hand reports of going along on alien excursions out to Saturn and back, and all the scientific stuff they'd learned. Our two photo phonies sent in some of their faked saucer shots but I don't recall if they were published.

I had found a dead '50 Ford 2dr sitting in someone's driveway and bought it for $40. Rebuilt the engine myself, and I got very good at pulling the engine and getting the crank out on the bench while it was still warm... trying to sort out why bearings kept going out (one main journal was out of round, losing oil press to nearby con-rods.)

Once that was fixed, it was a good running car, and I'd sometimes take it out to the Saturday nite drag races at the airport. All we had to do was remove the hubcaps to run! It was pretty slow, but it was fun to see what I could beat that should have been faster.

My dad had had a prior interest in photography and had some ancient developing gear that he didn't use. I did not get interested in photography until a military tour of duty in Turkey (starting with a Kodak Brownie Super 27). I'm very glad I did!

 

[Oldprof]

... It did not matter to me whether or not we should have been in Viet Nam, the fact was we were there and neither Nixon nor the soldiers serving had put us there ... The liberals at the time were like Lemmings and I was disgusted by their blind ignorance ...

Thank you for your post Honu-Hugger, but I don't think this forum is the appropriate place to refight the Viet Nam War. Your comment concerning the "blind ignorance" of antiwar "liberals" is gratuitous, inaccurate, and quite possibly offensive to some forum members who, in good conscience, might have been against the war in that far away time and place.

 

[Peter]

My high school years were spent mostly at the rifle-range. I was very active with the school air-rifle club and we did won several regional and national medals for the school. I was introduced to photography very early. My father was a photography enthusiast and his equipment was a priced Rolleiflex TLR. I still have the prints of my childhood made by that camera. When I was 9, I broke it and my dad never really forgave me for that incident! 🙁 The smashed Roleiflex is still with the family, maybe I could use it to teach something to my future children on responsibility and respect for others property.

I joined my high school photography club when my friends joined. Learned how to use an SLR (Yashica) and it was my first experience with 35mm as my previous camera used 110. My photography during those years was really bad and I was constantly at the butt of jokes. My like to push Tri-X to such graininess that my teacher would give me lectures on his version of real photography (Salon). After high school I went to Junior College and it was a couple of wasted years (I have no idea what is my purpose in life). After that, enlisted in Army for 2.5 years and it rekindled my interest in photography and life.

After Army, enrolled into Nursing College, studied hard (Very hard). Got to know my future wife and a scholarship to do a Master programme in Sydney. Came back to Singapore, bought my first RF (Voigtlander) and see my photography improve and got married. My short biography of my photography journey! 🙂

 

[Rich Silfver]

I was 13-14 years old and we had to take an 'additional' course and I picked photography. In my eyes then it seemed like a perfectly good way to slack through a few hours a week.

I was ok at drawing and had always been attracted to art - writing and drawing - so photography held a certain sort of attraction to me as well.

I remember being in the darkroom with 2-3 other people.
I plugged in a powercord to what I thought was to the enlarger and the cable (that was not connected to anything) threw up some sparks - and it all went black...

"I can't see anything!" I remember crying out - completely convinced that the sparks had blinded me. Ofcourse my friend next to me informed me laughingy that the power had just short-cutted and none of us could see anything.

Didn't really use a camera or develop anything for years and years after that.

🙂

 

[FrankS]

Ha, ha, ha! "Help me, I'm blind!" Funny story!

Please folks, let's keep politics and religion out of this forum.

 

[Honu-Hugger]

Thank you for your post Honu-Hugger, but I don't think this forum is the appropriate place to refight the Viet Nam War. Your comment concerning the "blind ignorance" of antiwar "liberals" is gratuitous, inaccurate, and quite possibly offensive to some forum members who, in good conscience, might have been against the war in that far away time and place.

My sincere apology, Oldprof, and to anyone else that may have taken offense. You are absolutely right regarding this forum and the fact that it happened a long time ago. Some family friends were there and the comments flowed with other memories while writing of those times...not an excuse, but an explanation for my lack of consideration. I need an editor...:bang:

D2 (the Doug with his foot in his mouth)

 

[Oldprof]

My sincere apology, Oldprof, and to anyone else that may have taken offense ...

I appreciate your gracious response Honu-Hugger. Very kind of you. The civility of the people here, including yourself, is one of the things that makes RangeFinderForum so enjoyable.

 

[digitalox]

I just can't believe everyone remembers things from so far back in time so well. I can only hope my memory is half as good when I get old. 😀

 

[wblanchard]

I can remember back as a kid being dragged around from place to place with my Dad who was in camera club. He used a Pentax Spotmatic and tried to teach me everything he could, but I found it boring and showed no interest.

Now that i've gotten older, I ask him if he would like to shoot with me and he finds it boring and shows no interest in it now.

I wish I would of taken the time to learn with him and really enjoy it with him when we had the time together.