To a teenager with raging hormones, taking pictures of inanimate objects held little interest. So the next few years were pretty much the same as any other kid.
A marine type boat.
At age 17, the old man agreed the place for me was the Marine Corps, and my Uncle Sam decided he would let me spend my 18th birthday on a nice boat ride to Korea. Had I been smarter I might have finagled my way into a roll as a Marine photographer, but I wasn’t and didn’t. What I did was to get sent to Japan on R&R with a few bucks in my pocket. There Keiko, my squeeze for the week,
Keiko..
steered me to a camera shop where for some princely sum I purchased my first Nikon from a company called Nipon Kogaku back then. A Nikon M 1, rangefinder with weird writings but the f: stop and shutter speeds I could read. This was my introduction to 35mm film and I immediately loved it. Some of the photos taken then ended up in Mom’s collection of her boys travel through age box, but none are very explanatory. Later, back in the states while I was hospitalized, my locker was broken into and the camera was stolen. Eventually after being discharged from the service, I found a second hand Nikon SP at the local camera dealer, where someone had traded it on a new model F SLR. It was purchased for about 80 bucks and I loved it. A lot of my early shooting was done with that camera until I too fell victim to the SLR with it’s cheap interchangeable lens and through the lens viewing, so the SP went back to the camera shop as a trade in on a Nikon F, which I still have today. Interesting thing was the camera had come back in demand when Leica introduced their M series, so I got more in trade than I paid originally.
Home and family
This was during the time after the service when I married and started raising a family. My old darkroom was moved from the folks place to my own first house. The solar enlarger was replaced with a Omega 4×5, the darkroom was built with a dry side and a wet side that could accommodate six 18 x 22 inch trays in a temperature controlled running water bath. Timers, scales to measure small weights, but mostly books on every aspect of the chemical properties of film and papers. I had also discovered the Jewish Community Center camera club in Mid-Town Detroit. The club was run by a bunch of old retired guys who had photo studios and felt that no camera with a negative small than 4 x 5 could produce a respectable image for competition. Wedding were still being shot by guys who wouldn’t look out of place in some 1940?s film where the press was running around with big Press Graphics and holes burned in their jacket pockets from hot FP bulbs. I tried to fit in, picked up a second hand Rolleflex and shot pictures of sailboats on Pan X, then blue toned them before entering. I had become a part of the Detroit photo scene, following the old masters. I started cheating, taking my pictures of kittens in a straw hat with a 35mm camera, but not letting anyone know I was doing it.
I still won a few blue ribbons along the way. Then one evening I walked in with a excellent photo of an ice storm in a local grave yard printed as a 2 by 3 foot picture and mounted on a piece of plywood. It was far to large to put in competition where the standard size was 16 x 20 inches, so I stood it up on a corner table behind the coffee pot and fixings ready for the after the competition discussion period. Where it was sure to get closely looked at by the old pro’s who ran the place. At the table a lot of discussion was centered around how I had produced an image that large. I explained that large cardboard boxes were cut down and lined with plastic sheeting from the painters supply. Mops were used to work the chemicals and the wash was a garden hose in the back yard. Mounted with contact cement. But everyone assumed that it was shot with a large camera. I had to ask what camera did they think was used. None said 35mm, the most adventuresome thought I had used my 2 1/4 square Rollie. Then I asked them to recheck the image quality and lift the little flap down in the lower corner, which exposed a contact print from a half frame 35 mm camera. The first from Olympus, the Pen camera. That broke the ice and they started believing quality images could be made with less than a 4 x 5 negative. Some even bought the pen.
But people were still the interesting subjects for me. And pictures of people were not very impressive to the judges, so my reputation became a tad soiled as I started entering photos of people doing interesting things. My job at the time was that of a cable splicer for the Michigan Bell Telephone Company in the City of Detroit, back when it held 2 million people and was the 4th largest city in the US. While I liked my Nikon F’s, I had two of them by this time, they; like the dSLR’s of today, were bag cameras, and while my little pen camera went into the pocket nice, it just wasn’t camera enough for times when I wanted more adjustments available. I picked up another rangefinder camera, a Leica M3, with a film rapid advance lever and a collapsible 50mm lens. In my opinion the greatest rangefinder ever. This went in my lunch box in summers or jacket pocket during cold weather every day as I roamed the City of Detroit at work. My pictures still won a few ribbons, but they drew the interest of some more important folks to my way of seeing. Tony Spina, the chief photographer at the Detroit Free Press offered me a job, and I declined, but did accept assignments on occasion to shoot the kind of low light imagery I was becoming known for at the club. He referred others to me, foreign magazines for instance that wanted shots of Detroit’s blues scene in the black nightclubs.
You wonder where the money came from for that stuff, well I shot weddings for a few years, and kept a portfolio on Black Star over in London until it burnt down when all their images were destroyed. The weddings became to much, shooting every weekend then spending the evenings in the dark room creating prints, putting wedding albums together and so on. During this period I was also involved with the Greater Detroit Camera Club Council as Vice President, which entailed setting up Photo Shows, finding spaces, arranging with model agencies, etc. etc… Attending other camera club meetings when they ask for a visiting judge for their local competitions. I would wander around on free summer weekends with a 5 x 7 view camera strapped on my back or in a boat making large transparencies for possible calendar sale at Black Star. They demanded large, nothing smaller than 4 x 5 at the time. I had also been tapped several times by the people at work to make slide shows for their meetings. From that I was asked to make a movie, and produced a very nice industrial film. A 15 minute 16mm sound using the many places in Detroit back then to rent, purchase and handle supplies and equipment. From that I gained a rep and had many camera stores sending me people who wanted me to produce one for them. My cup was full, heck my cup was running over and I was burnt out. Within the next few years, I quit. I quit everything photographic. The cameras went on the shelf, were sold or given away to aspiring new kids. I relaxed by going back to school and learning electronics, getting my First Class Radio operators license and going off in a different direction. It was right about 1969-70 by then and I had lived as a picture taker through the most interesting times of the past to photograph. Unfortunatly after my divorce the X in a fit of rage burned my huge collection of prints and negatives that weren’t family related, so I have nothing from that time frame to show.