Life thru a lens...

My family has always had an interest in photography. My paternal gf transitioned from still photography with a Kodak Brownie to a Keystone 8mm movie camera. My father never had interest in still photos but instead preferred an 8mm home movie camera eventually settling on I think (?) a Revere which could record audio.

My mother was only interested in still photography. And I felt so uncomfortable being in front of a home movie camera I decided at a *very* young age that I only wanted to be involved with still photography ("don't look at the camera; now do something." Ugh!).

Sometime after WW-II (1950 maybe? We were living on E Taylor at the time) my mother bought a used Argus C3 35mm camera for $25 from B&H Camera in New York City via mail order (B&H Camera is still around and I'm still a customer). I thought it was downright ugly and simultaneously the greatest thing I'd seen since my 3-speed "English bicycle" (a Schwinn with skinny tires). So I saved my $$ and about a year later I found a used one for myself from the same mail order store for $30. I used that for many years- in fact it got me from about 1951 to about 1961.

An old Argus C3 - identical to mine from about 1951 (?)

It was a pretty rudimentary camera but it had the essentials. Apparently it was a cheap knock-off of a pre-war Leica but re-package to look like a black brick. And it weighed a ton. The shutter, lens and film speed settings worked and I got ok photos from it to the extent I composed the scene properly. It worked. And it worked better when I could borrow a light meter!

It was about the 2nd or 3rd roll of film I discovered that the photos from the camera actually required that the user create the image- the camera just recorded what was in front of the lens. Pointing and clicking didn't get a good image. Oops! I haunted the Washoe County Library in Reno which had a fair amount of information about photography... circa 1930. Picture Ansel Adams lugging a 30 lb plate-film camera with 25 lb tripod up a mountain in Yosemite and you'll have an idea.

Ansel Adams working from the roof of his car. I suspect this camera used 8" x 10" glass-plate film. This setup weighed a ton! I believe it was his daughter who helped him carry all this stuff!

About the time I learned you actually had to have some talent to take decent photos I also discovered image processing circa 1950. What they call the 'dark room'. If you used black & white film you could buy certain chemicals made by Kodak plus a few pieces of equipment and process everything yourself. Work in the dark room required less talent but a fair bit of discipline: if you could follow the rules for using the chemicals and measure the time accurately, you could actually get the image off the film and onto a paper photo. It was a 'technical' task (vs. artistic creativity) and that was something I managed to grasp quickly. And it was fun.

In the mean time what was going onto the film from in front of the camera was still crap. And I learned that buying the camera was a license to spend money for film and processing. (!) So the number of times I actually clicked the shutter shrank simply because of the $$ required to see the results.

In Feb 1953 we moved from Reno, Nevada to Stockton, California. By late 1953 I was able to land a part-time job and that introduced some $$ to take more photos. Our first residence in Stockton (the only place I lived in Stockton as a resident before boot camp and then later college) was a 2nd floor apartment above a film processing lab. Reiman Photo Processing owned the building and I eventually got to know Mr. Reiman. When he learned I was interested in film processing he switched off the grumpy face and became a helpful camera/film mentor. I had found an inexpensive enlarger and would set up a dark room in the only bathroom in the apartment (summers only when my parents were at work!). I processed a fair amount of b&w film and created images from direct print and enlargements.

Photo enlarger- not what I had but along this line.
This one is a little too fancy for what I could afford!

I had a nice surprise when I started at Stockton High in Feb 1953. I discovered I could take a photography-related class as an alternate to the required introductory art class. Bingo! A class in something I had started doing on my own. And it was a good thing I already had some basic (self-) training- the instructor was so swamped with the rest of the class (painting, sculpture, carving, more) he had no time to teach the 3 photo-processing students anything about the subject. All 3 of us were already self-trained. We had a great time! One of them - Jimmy Hooper - ended up a professional portrait photographer in Stockton.

Mr. Reiman thought the lens on my new enlarger was not the best choice for use with 35mm film and explained what might be more appropriate. By some means I bought what he suggested- probably at their Reiman Camera Store downtown- it was run by his son. He built an adapter plate to mount to mount the new lens so I could use it with my enlarger. Mr. Reiman made a huge difference for me in my efforts in photography- he was incredibly generous with his time and knowledge.