I got the camera thing going on early in my life. My first camera was a Kodak Pocket Instamatic 110 for my birthday in 1973. I have no photos from that time, but later on I saved enough to purchase a Sears Brand Pentax SLR. I set up my own darkroom and developed my own film, favoring Ilford HP 5 over Kodak’s offerings.
I learned the hard way that the chemical processes that produced my favorite photos was not made to last, at least the way I was doing it. An archival process existed, but it was detailed and expensive. Fast forward 35 years and now slide and negative scanners exist within very reasonable prices to the public. It takes a bit of reading and experience to get useable images for Photoshop, but it is far easier to learn than the wet processing and printing I did as a young man.
The image above was taken in the High Desert of California in 1977. I admit to my failure to properly protect the negative, but I thank Epson for the equipment that made recovering the image relatively simple.
I lived in the San Fernando Valley from birth until August of 1980 when I entered the service. Even then I understood it took many elements to make a good photograph, above all was showing something the consumer might never see. The photo above involved climbing a 4000 foot mountain to catch one of the hang gliders who launched from a decommissioned Nike missile base at the top of the San Gabriel Mountains. I was fortunate to find and recover this image from 1978.
Class trips were a good time to get photos. This one was taken at Saddleback Butte State Park in 1977. I had a big crush on the high desert of California back then. It was vast and open in comparison to the enclosed valley my home was located.
When I entered the service, I found out a ship crewman’s job was not limited to what he was trained on in service school. I was Electronic Warfare, but I was also Damage Control Petty Officer, and as luck would have it, the ship’s photographer for a few years. Most of my photography involved documenting those pesky Soviets, their ships and aircraft. But I also had a chance to photograph other activities around the ship. The image above is an underway replenishment operation in the Indian Ocean during a heavy sea state. I love the dynamic tones I was able to capture.
I did all the processing of black and white images in a deep sink closet near my watch station. Sometimes I had to employ a method of “Push Processing ” to get pictures well outside of the ISO of the film and exposure. This lead to a higher amount of grain in the photograph, but it was more about documenting an event rather than the quality of the image. This photo of the USS Knox, F-1052 was taken in the North Pacific when we were chasing a Soviet Battle Group. It was a heavy sea and I had to push the film to get images of the Soviet Battle Group composition for intelligence purposes. This was an after thought and I got a very dynamic image which I slipped into my personal catalog. If anything, the film grain and slight tint of time have added to the artistic merits of the photograph.
The ship’s camera was a very nice Canon SLR. The model number is lost to me, but I took advantage of the situation and used it on the beach when I had the chance. I have discussed the recovery of this picture which was originally a color image in greater detail here.
Join the Navy, see the world. My first cruise took me to a circumnavigation of the Australian Continent and a stop in Sydney, Australia. The above was originally color, but the colors didn’t seem to make sense, even back then. In black and white, it made for a cleaner and more interesting architectural study. The grain is a bit high, but it still makes for something interesting.
Hope you enjoyed this essay.
Happy Hunting.
The Digital Lens 