Any elder photo grunts still out there?

[David A. Goldfarb]

I'm no old timer, but when I was in high school, indeed, the darkroom was in the same part of the building as the print shop and was just around the corner from the auto shop. The photo and printing teacher was a wedding photog in his spare time. We had a horizontal process camera built into a room adjacent to the darkroom and had one of those Arkay contact printers with adjustable bulbs. I can't say that Mr. F. and I got along all that well, but I did learn to tie a string to the stand of the main light in a basic portrait setup to measure the distance to the subject's nose. He also told us about the guy who shot for the Cleveland _Plain Dealer_, who would usually cover football games with a Speed Graphic as late as the 1980s and would take one shot per game.

I had an uncle who was a real old timer who shot news and freelance advertising work, mostly with his Nikon F2's, when I knew him, but shot Rolleis and probably a Speed Graphic before then. He and his sons ran a camera shop where I bought my first cameras, and they had a collection of great old equipment on display.

[Struan Gray]

Grunt or fart? Sometimes it's hard to tell.

My Grandad shot glass plates of J-Class yachts from an eight foot dinghy. 4x5 for him was 'miniature' format, suitable only for crude press work and amatuer snapshots. *His* dad made four-colour gum prints of Grand Prix cars in motion and his grandad was developing Daguerrotypes in his lunchbox while working a forty hour day at t' mill, getting up before he went to bed and licking road clean wi' tounge.

Ahem.

I love these discussions. They remind me of the old-time classical musicians I know, from the days when live acoustic instruments were in the background everywhere and being a full-time violinist was a lowly drudge trade. They hark back to a time when individual skill and effort was much less prized and much less well paid than it is today, and what now are seen as creative activities were stifled into a lowest common denominator job that could be done with chimps if only the peanuts weren't so expensive. Like old war horses, you may stiffen to the sound of a drum, but it was grim before it was romantic.

Lucifer's Lawyer, aka....

[John Berry ( Roadkill )]

Sounds like the same as a friend of mine that went to brooks and was " in the trench". I now realize why he never wanted to go out and shoot for fun. Then again I never tuned up a guys Cat on the weekend for fun. Like Eugene I'm glad I made photography a hobby in stead of a vocation.

[Ted Harris]

Someone above touched on it ... from 1954 through 1059 I seldom had a chancve to see what would happen if you let a negative driy before printing it. Fromt he football field or basketball court or whatever sports eent into the darkroom and, then if you were lucky, you had time to get the negative almsot dry before they wanted it for the next edition of the paper. I still get a kick watching the guys with their Nikons and nine jillion mm lenses doing football. I got some great action shots with my Graphic and whatever lens happened to be on it. Yeah, I got knocked over a few times too. Maybe all that is why I stay away from all those 'classic' Graphics now.

And John, anytime you want to talk Colortrans come on over. I remember shooting in a studio where the models froze until I turned on the hot lights and then they never froze again. Or how I gave up a career as a theatrical lighting designer becuase in those days youhad to pass the lighting, costume and sets part of the exam to join the union and there was now ay I could do the renderings for the costumes. So I stuck with physics as the main way I earned a living always making my extra shekels with photography or 'ghost' lighting things for others.

[Jim Galli]

So John, I take it this means you haven't had any post death visits from Ansel or heard his voice.....or anything like that? Hmmm.

[Peter Hruby]

John,

fabulous article. I am too young to realize years you are talking about, but it is fascinating to hear it. I can imagine all hard work and real situations you went through.

School and real life it was always a difference. I think school is more about teachers and their theories than teaching life experience. I was lucky to have a professor who taught experience - real life. Great man.

I love to hear stories of experienced people. You must be proud of yourself what you probably accomplished when you look back. Feels great anyway, huh? All fun you had over this years, headaches, worries, pressures, pains, long hours... UAU.

People wants to be famous like Adams or other great photographers, but I truly believe Adams and the others did not make any pictures to become famous, they did it because they loved it. The glory came with it. They did their hard work.

Real life stories - way to go. I believe that your point of view at photography is far beyond I may accomplish in my whole life. Simply because you live with it. I do it as a serious hobby because I love it. I think it is not enough.

[Merg Ross]

This brings back memories of my early years in commercial photography, printing on Resisto from wet negatives to make the deadline. My father was a successful advertising photographer with J. Walter Thompson Agency when I was growing up. He did not give me the sage advice that Eugene received and I plunged into a career in photography. However, after fifty years I have not lost the passion nor regret my choice.

John, excellent job of writing!

[Wayne Firth]

John, a great story. Brings back memories. I'm one of those old guys that you talk about. I went to photo school in a grubby old building on the edge of skid row in Philadelphia. The word "art" never came up in that education. Their business was to teach us the nuts and bolts techniques of photography. In other words it was all about how to make a living with a camera. In those days not many respectable photographers made a living with a 35mm camera so we were actually forbidden to bring a 35mm camera into the building let alone actually use it. Grudgingly, we were allowed to occasionally use 12o film but 99 percent of our work had to be done with 4x5, 5x7 and sometimes 8x10. The owner of the school had been a prominent portrait photographer in Philly and would say: "When you young fellows spend 13 cents for a piece of film you will think twice about tripping the shutter." His version of pre-visualization.

After photo school I did time as a photographer in the Air Force for a few years where I learned to develop 100 8x10 prints at a time in a hypo tub full of Dektol. No talk of archival processing here. The brown used to peel off of my fingernails after awhile. I made my way through the jack-of-all-trade industrial world and then into architectural photography. After all of these years I made my way to a position where I now hire photographers who don't know what Dektol is let alone know how to use it. That's ok because we don't have a darkroom anymore and the do-gooders forbid us from having those "nasty chemicals" in the building. I kept up with the times and have been all digital for the past few years but I still dabble in the old ways with my personal work. I get to retire this year and I'm moving to wine country so I might try combining wine and photography.

[francisco_5406]

Ahh, I remember the good old days when my 8mb Macintosh II got it's first 24-bit color video card. That was high living, you young pups don't know how easy you've got it. Back then we had to use programs like Image Studio and Digital Darkroom because Photoshop hadn't been invented yet, gawdangit. We could only do greyscale scans on $4000 Kurziweil flatbeds because we couldn't get drum scans onto a floppy, and a 10mb hard drive cost $2000.

Back in those days we used to do trapping by hand, and strip in film separations. We had to dither our continuous tone images and none of the Scitex operators understood what we were trying to do.

Remember 2400 baud modems? 400k floppies?

A far cry from these newbs with their Epson 9600s in their living rooms, and supercomputers on their laps. How many elderly digital grunts with Linotronic paper and Iris replacement nozzles are still out there?

[Mark Sawyer]

I don't think I qualify as an Old Photo Grunt, (OPG; the newest TLA!) Maybe a Middle-aged Photo Grunt... Four years as a photographer/photo-conservator with the National Park Service, eight years as a photographer for the Arizona Historical Society, now going on seven years as a high school/community college photo teacher.

But if it makes you old guys feel any better, I have a few teenagers who call our digital camera "the Devil's Camera," and fight over who gets to check out the Speed Graphic with the Honeywell Strobonar (aka "the Eye of God). If you'd like to see one high school student's image, it's at:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=66465&item=7317405654&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

(Note, this student just got a 4x5 Cambo with a 90mm SA and 210 Caltar. I would have killed for such a set up when I was in college...)