Formative Years: A Developing Photographer

(Continued from Introduction: How It All Started)

Featured Photo: “Staircase and Windows, Independence Hall” Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—1976

In the summer of 1972, when I was 13, I took my Polaroid One-Step camera—extravagantly loaded with color-film packs—on another family vacation: a cross-country road trip from our home in Memphis, Tennessee. We first checked-in with mom and dad’s relatives in Texas—my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins—then continued driving westward, farther than I had ever been before.

On the journey, I tried to capture—in pictures—the natural grandeur of the American west, as I experienced it. Although the color has faded from these old snapshots, I think the wonder and majesty of the images still remain. Among the places we visited were the Grand Canyon in Arizona…

…and Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico…

…(that’s me on the right, with my mom, dad, and brother).

The following summer, we again drove west—this time, all the way to California—where I first experienced San Francisco…

…and Yosemite.

Early on, in addition to my Polaroid, I owned other cameras—most of which would not be recognized today—including a Kodak Pocket 110 instamatic, which could fit in my shirt pocket (as the name suggests).

My Kodak camera made color photography even easier, as it used compact, drop-in film cartridges. But this convenience came with an attendant increase in cost: getting the film developed and having color photos printed. The small size of the film negatives, coupled with a relatively low-quality lens, resulted in photographs that were not very sharp and rather grainy.

Despite its mixture of “good faults and bad faults,” my Pocket 110 was a handy companion for a few years. For a third straight year, our summer vacation led my family westward. Armed with my Kodak camera, I chronicled this trip, as we approached the imposing Rocky Mountains in Colorado…

…then ascended to the summit at Pikes Peak…

…pausing long enough, along the way, to have a snowball fight with my brother. Living in Memphis—where the weather always seemed to be some degree of hot and humid—it was truly remarkable to be standing in a field of snow during the summer months.

Our drive then continued on to the Pueblo Cliff Dwellings at Mesa Verde, with the grand and mysterious Cliff Palace first viewed from afar…

…then from a closer vantage point.

Later that year—or perhaps it was the following year—recognizing how much I enjoyed photography, my mom and dad gave me a 35-mm Single-Lens-Reflex (SLR) camera, which I had picked out of the Sears Christmas “Wish Book” Catalog. Remember, this was well before on-line shopping, as we have today; it would be another 20 years before Amazon was even started, and longer until it became the retail giant it is now. Back when I was a kid, it seemed everything came from Sears; sadly, the company is now out of business, after a history dating back more than a century.

My new camera—a Sears AUTO 500 TLS—was literally a wish-come-true, elevating my photography toolkit to new levels. I felt proud—even “cool”—carrying my new SLR slung from my shoulder; my parents had also given me a wide red-white-and-black stitched neck-strap to replace the original, thin plastic strap that came in the camera box. Along with the fixed focal length 48-mm lens, the camera came with two screw-in lens adapters—one wide-angle, the other telephoto.

My earlier point-and-shoot cameras had a separate viewfinder offset from the lens; but obviously, the lens captures the image in a photograph. By contrast, the instruction manual for my new camera put it this way: with a Single-Lens-Reflex, “You view and take the picture through the same lens. What you see in the viewfinder, you see on the film.” My Sears SLR merged the image I wanted to capture and how I observed it; the camera unified my photographic vision.

Unlike most SLR cameras today, which are “auto-everything” and digital, my new camera used film and required manual focusing—despite having “AUTO” in its name. This meant aligning the split-image seen in the viewfinder.

It’s one auto-attribute was helpful: Automatic Exposure. Once I had selected the shutter speed I wanted, the camera would set the right lens aperture, so the photo would be properly exposed—not too bright, not too dark. But this otherwise mostly-manual SLR camera enhanced my early understanding of the science behind light, exposure, and depth-of-field in photography.

Even though it was from Sears, I always believed my SLR was made in partnership with a high-quality camera company. A recent internet search confirmed that, for a while, Sears sold cameras made by Ricoh, a company which later expanded into office equipment, like printers and copiers, and went on to acquire the Pentax brand of cameras and lenses. But the same internet search seemed to prove that—rather than Ricoh—my Sears AUTO 500 SLR was made by Mamiya, a company specializing in professional “medium-format” cameras, used by portrait and wedding photographers. It seems my camera was, in fact, the Mamiya Sekor 528 TL—rebranded with the Sears name—identical down to the attached lens and two accompanying screw-in lens adapters.

Thinking back, I can’t recall what became of my Polaroid or Kodak cameras from those early years; I certainly no longer own them. But I do still have that gift from my parents—the Sears SLR camera—even to this day. My Sears SLR went with me to college; I used it when I took a photography course, and it helped me win a photo contest—the only one, ever.

About the same time I was taking pictures with my Sears camera, my brother bought his own 35-mm SLR camera: a fully-manual Canon FTb—a classic—with a high-quality, fixed focal length 50-mm Canon lens.

With a shared interest in photography, my brother and I set up a darkroom inside a storage shed in our backyard, complete with a garden hose hooked up to a sink, supplying the water we needed. In this improvised space, we mixed and stored our own photographic chemicals—developer, stop bath, and fixer. Working in black-and-white, we developed our own 35-mm film and printed our own pictures on Kodak and Ilford photographic paper, using an Omega B600 photo enlarger (which my brother still had in his attic—collecting dust—more than 40-years later.)

That was back when I was in high school, a year or two before I left Memphis and headed off to college. My brother and I were proud of our darkroom know-how, and thrilled with the artistic results of our efforts. We both went on to become chemists—rather than photographers—but we each maintained a love for the creative side of life. And that darkroom experience, along with my SLR camera, set the stage for future adventures in life and photography.

The Featured Photo, titled “Staircase and Windows, Independence Hall,” was taken with my Sears SLR in 1976—America’s Bicentennial—when I was visiting my sister, who then lived in Philadelphia. Originally built between 1732 and 1753 to be the Pennsylvania State House, this historic site is now called Independence Hall because it was here the Founding Fathers first debated, then signed both the Declaration of Independence (in 1776) and the U.S. Constitution (in 1787).

My sister and I were on a guided tour of Independence Hall—back in 1976, the tour covered both the downstairs and upstairs parts of the building. Having viewed the chambers on the lower floor and heard the history from 200 years prior, our tour was about to proceed upstairs to the rooms above. As I followed the group toward the staircase, I glanced up and saw the image captured in the photo: bright sun streaming through a deep-set window above the banister and risers; the reflection from a lower window illuminating the paneled woodwork beneath. I quickly drew my camera’s viewfinder to my eye and pressed the shutter release, just before the first visitors reached the stairway. When I got home to Memphis, I developed the film and printed my photo from Independence Hall.

Later, when I was in college, I heard a local camera store was sponsoring a photo contest. I entered my picture, “Staircase and Windows, Independence Hall,” and won that contest—my one day of glory as a photographer! I used the prize—a $100 gift certificate—to buy photographic supplies for our makeshift darkroom back home: chemicals and stainless-steel tanks for developing our black-and-white film; lens filters and variable-contrast photo paper for printing pictures with our photo enlarger. The supplies have long been used up, and the equipment given away or lost; these days, there’s no need for the old way of creating photographs.

I continued to use film cameras for a few more years; when I got my first real job, I bought a nice Canon SLR camera. My career trajectory eventually provided an opportunity to travel and photograph the world—or at least, parts of it. Meanwhile, during my working years, I would meet my future wife and start a family. Things looked bright as I gazed through my camera lens…but I’m getting ahead of myself.

(To be continued…)