The Old Days...
Jan 7, 2017 09:42:43 #
There is a saying that the longest journey starts with the first step. My father introduced me to photography when I was eleven by showing how his 4x5 Speed Graphic worked. There was a darkroom in the house where he would work the magic of producing images that he squeegeed onto a ferrotype plate. He would place the plate next to a radiator cover and in the morning I would get to see the preview of the prints in a pile on the floor. That led me to a 127 plastic Brownie 127 roll film camera. My first step at the time was Kodak's "How to Make Good Pictures". Today we are all wrapped up in the technology but not as much as what it takes to see a good photograph before we even pick up the camera. A good place for the beginner to start is to see what the masters of photography have left us in the images of their legacy. Film forced the photographer to think and not to use digital cameras today by over shooting a subject in hopes of one being acceptable.
Jan 7, 2017 09:44:50 #
AlanD
Loc: TC, MN
Thank you, to all who have responded. I don't recall the Kodak brochures, but have been inspired by their books mentioned. I, too, continue to be inspired by the photographs posted on UHH, as well as, other web-sites I've found over the years. Truly, the internet has given more to the art of photography...
Jan 7, 2017 09:58:30 #
AlanD
Loc: TC, MN
One needs not copy others, but indeed can be inspired to emulate from observation from those who have the eye...
Jan 7, 2017 10:00:19 #
AlanD wrote:
One needs not copy others, but indeed can be inspired to emulate from obsevation from those who have the eye...
I doubt too many people have an absolute original idea. We all have influences that affect our art or craft.
Jan 7, 2017 10:49:27 #
romanticf16
Loc: Commerce Twp, MI
Acountry330 wrote:
The old days were filled with failure. Black and white box cameras were just awful. I will stick with my modern DLSR thank you.
You're kidding? Joe Clark, HBSS(hill billy snap shooter) took a box brownie to Lynchburg, Tenn. in the 1930's. The images he took with that box camera ended up being a 5 page spread in Life Magazine. He became a commercial photographer and did the Jack Daniels ad photos for most of his life. He was followed by his son June Bug Clark, who also did the Daniels account until the distillery was bought by a foreign liquor conglomerate. JB is still a commerc-ial photographer.
Jan 7, 2017 10:53:02 #
Rongnongno wrote:
The old days are always 'good' because we have a t... (show quote)
You had it easy
. When I was a kid we walked a mile both ways to school in the rain or snow and walked home for lunch then back again. There was also a pretty good sized hill between the homes and the school so it can also be said that we walked up hill both ways! 
Jan 7, 2017 11:05:08 #
cactuspic
Loc: Dallas, TX
While I wouldn't trade my current cameras for my Kodak Signet (estimate the distance to set the focus), there was something magical about throwing a print in the soup and watching an image form under the red darkroom light. It is more than just romanticizing the past. It's about forming bonds with photography, learning to use the available tools, learning to see. NO, I don't want to go back to the days when my girlfriend (now wife of 38 years) and I were church-mice poor law students, who would occasionally take a break from our ramen or spaghetti dinners by springing for the $3.85 Tuesdays night pizza special at Duddington's. Whether we had enough money to share a beer was another question. But I wouldn't trade that experience for my present economic state. Who knows? Maybe future generations will look at our cameras as quaint and wonder how we got along without capturing 3D images. No, I wouldn't go back to my Signet and the wet darkroom; but then I wouldn't trade the experience of learning photography with it for my present day DSLRs and lenses
Jan 7, 2017 11:05:16 #
Jan 7, 2017 11:21:44 #
Remember in the old days we could pick up a pen buried in ice on the ground, bring it home and it worked flawlessly as long as it still had ink. Today you can't get new ones from Wal Mart that work for a second. I had to walk a half mile back and forth to school in the snow belt and many times battled blizzards and one day 70 mile per hour head winds. I could jump up and move back from the wind almost 30 feet on a good gust. Could easily won the long jump with no effort. Moving forward a couple of inches on each effort took about all I could muster. No one back in those days to come and pick you up in the car. Then for my senior year I was a safety on the busiest and most dangerous corner in the whole metropolitan area. That a was a joy, freezing my back end off, standing in blizzards for almost an hour twice a day. Sometimes the blizzards were so bad, you couldn't see the other end of the intersection.
Jan 7, 2017 12:03:59 #
Perhaps you survived the "Winter of '49". It must have been a real beast in Wyoming and other flatlands in the West.
Jan 7, 2017 12:05:07 #
AlanD
Loc: TC, MN
Ah! yes the walking to school thing... I think mine was a mile, but pretty level ground. Snow/rain/cold. I learned pretty quick how to hitch-hike. Now you don't see that much more these days...
Jan 7, 2017 12:17:15 #
AlanD wrote:
Ah! yes the walking to school thing... I think mine was a mile, but pretty level ground. Snow/rain/cold. I learned pretty quick how to hitch-hike. Now you don't see that much more these days...
Wow, I loved walking to and from school, especially home. A little over a mile each way, flat farm type land. I walked most of the way alongside a canal. I threw rocks into it, found cans and bottles alongside the road and pretended they were boats and threw rocks at them until they sank. Sniffed the old stale beer cans and whisky bottles and from that never drank any sort of alcohol in my life and can't stand the smell of it. Today people would freak out about a small kid walking alone on a road with a canal on one side and playing around it. And one other thing after I turned 8, I would take my 22 rifle to school, leave it in the office, retrieve it after school and shoot cans, bottles and frogs in the canal on the way home.
Jan 7, 2017 12:23:25 #
Ricker wrote:
Perhaps you survived the "Winter of '49". It must have been a real beast in Wyoming and other flatlands in the West.
remember those winters well in south dakota.
Teacher would let all 8 of us keep our coats on and sit closer to the stove,
but we had to take our ear muffs off.
Jan 7, 2017 12:27:25 #
Leitz
Loc: Solms
AlanD wrote:
One needs not copy others, but indeed can be inspired to emulate from observation from those who have the eye...
Please read the comment I replied to. I believe that if one needs to see a picture someone else has taken in order to become inspired to pick up their camera, they cannot have a passion for the art and likely never will. I hope I am wrong on that last point.
Jan 7, 2017 12:29:21 #
AlanD wrote:
There was a question not long ago about the first ... (show quote)
My grandfather bought this for me at Christmas 1955. I still have it on a shelf here in my office. I still have my "Joys of Photography". I also still have my Yashica 635, my Mamiya 1000DTL, and my Argus C3, as well as Pentax 67 , Canon AE1, and my Canon EOS10S. I wish I had kept my Kowa Six and my Mamiya 645 but I sold them a few years ago. And contrary to some comments here, they were good old days. They were good old days because of the fond memories. We also spent more time photographing than processing. My first roll of film cost 39 cents to get developed. I have enjoyed digital photography but I still have grave concern about the preservation of digital images in the long term.
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