We had our first snow the other evening.  I thought darn, this is early.  I should take a picture and show it to Dorothy’s sister out in California.  She will really be glad she no longer lives here.  So as it is 1965 ( I seem to have lost a few years someplace ) and photography is done by people who have a lot of time invested in learning the trade.  I’m one of those people and I want to capture the moment.

Off to the closet where I select the Nikon F body loaded with Kodak’s new fast High Speed Ektachrome color slide film from the camera bag.  Next I dig out the medium wide 35 mm f:2.8 Nikor lens and mount it.  Lets see, I have that brand new Photomic light meter so I step out to verify my original guess and measure the incident light.  This is such an improvement from my old estimate from experience gained from many hours shooting test shots.   The film is rated at 160 ASA.  A totally awesome speed, but I’m going to need flash so I’ll expose it at 120 ASA and slightly underdeveloped in the first developer to reduce contrast.  It’s a new film and I haven’t experimented much to find the slow exposure speed reciprocity factor, so will use the one listed on the paper in the film container.  Now where did I put that paper last.  I’ll use my brand new electronic flash unit. From experimenting I know that if I set the distance on the flash to only 5 feet it will briefly flash but not wipe out any background light.  Just enough fill to make my subject stand out, but not overpower the background.  So remembering to change the camera’s flash setting from the more often used M when used with flash bulbs where it triggered a few milliseconds before the curtain opened to allow a bulb to build in intensity before opening the shutter curtain.  I was now using electronic instant flash, so set it to X sync. That will cause the flash to wait until the shutter curtain was fully open before setting it off at 1/1000 of a second.  Looks like I’m going to be shooting at a longer exposure, better get the tripod out.  Calls for 2 seconds at f:2.8 and over expose but under develop to keep the contrast low, get the back ground but not wipe out the flashed foreground.  Definitely tripod time.

Take the camera and tripod out on the porch, set it down to cool while I put my heavy woolen coat and boots on. Find the cable release and it’s adapter, don’t know why Nikon can’t have a screw in place like all the other cameras.  Set the shutter and screw the adapter down around it. Hold the flash on it’s extension off on the side of the lens to avoid reflections, press the shutter release , the flash goes off and looking out over the camera I see what I hope is on the film. But I better be sure, unscrew the adapter and change the shutter speed put the adapter back on and start bracketing exposures, I make three up and three down at ½ f:stop intervals. Bring the cold camera back in the house now and let it warm up before rewinding the film. Take the film down into the darkroom.  Good, I still have one more use in the chemicals before they are depleted.  Using the changing bag, I load the film into my Nikkor stainless steel tanks.  Go through the six bath development process.  Its washing now and I’m tired, I have been fooling round with this stuff for three hours and it’s bed time.  I have to go to work tomorrow.  Finally it’s washed enough and I hang it to dry.  I get my first look with a magnifying glass before going to bed.  Looks pretty good.

Next day before going to work, I’m excited and can’t wait.  I get up early and check my dried film out with the loupe on a light box.  Looks really good.  After work I carefully cut the film into six exposure strips and place them in a glassine envelope.  Dang, to print these in my darkroom means mixing a new batch of very expensive chemistry, and for one shot.  So I drive over to the custom lab and have them print each one by my instructions. I’m pleased, I have 5 x 7 inch images and they look good.  So far they have cost me total around 30 of the 1965 dollars, or about a hundred and fifty bucks in today’s money.  Now selecting the best image, I run home and put it in a mailer, off to the post office where I get special treatment in a special heavy cardboard mailer, send them air mail so the picture goes on a plane instead of a train.  A little more expensive but I do want their family to see what they are missing as soon as possible you know.  So five days after the first snow fell, her sister gets a nice full color picture taken from my front porch. Yep, that’s 1965 photography and here is my picture.

That would be in 1965, but this is December of 2011 and forty five years have gone by.(To damn fast )..  So I pick up my Canon point and shoot, set the exposure to night scenery,  step out on the porch in my stocking feet,  look through the little eye hole and push the button once.  Step back in the warm house through a door I didn’t even bother closing for this great photo task.   Back to the computer, plug the camera in, transfer it to the  email and it’s out in California on her monitor in an 11 x 15 inch size seconds later.  Minutes after I first mentioned that it had started snowing

Golly gee Mr Cleaver,  photography sure has changed.