Any elder photo grunts still out there?

[Gene Crumpler]

I guess I qualify as a dilettante, although I really don't like wine. Many, many years ago, I considered photography as a profession. I was able to "try it out" before I made a decision(lousy pay). My parents were quite relieved when I went to Engineering School. If I had become an old grunt, I guess I would be smelling of fixer and working until I dropped. Instead, I travel the world with my wife and make 100's of negatives of exotic places that I never print:>)

My story is at http://genecrumpler.home.att.net

[John Cook]

Thanks, guys.

Hope I’m not alienating the younger amateurs. Without the (usually impossible) commercial budget and deadline constraints it is often possible for amateurs to spread their photographic wings far beyond what professionals are allowed. Most of the best work I have ever seen has been personal photography.

However, it does get tiresome to have no response when talking about Ansco film, Packard shutters, Degroff bulb releases, Colortran lighting systems, Honeywell potato mashers, horizontal process cameras and Benday tint screens. The ear of a fellow old-timer would be welcome.

One eventually attains the age when while still mildly appreciative of a bottle-blonde starlet sporting a silicone rack, would much rather spend the evening with a nice little cookie-baker with fat thighs.

As the late Bob Hope once answered when asked about all the sex and violence on television, “At my age, it’s all the same thing”.

[Bruce Wehman]

John: great post! While you were at Art Center I was up the coast at Brooks (GI Bill). They weren’t as artsy but more hands-on-practical. It came in handy at my first job as a jack-of-all-trades commercial photographer in Denver. We had a continuous Pako quantity print line with a ferrotype drum that stood six feet, two APAC contact printers and three APAC projection easels. Two Master Views for location work, a C1 in the studio, along with several banquet cameras and a two Cirkut cameras, kept the operation rolling until an economic slump in the eighties brought it all to a halt…..all black and white. I used to soup Cirkut film by rolling it from one roll to the other in 3 ½ gallon tanks, by hand. Most of my work was location but I did my share of products in the studio as well. I worked in a fast paced environment with a lot of other people doing the same stuff and we never talked about things like gamma, zones, visualization, transcendence, or what informed our sensibilities.

How about this: reflector pans holding eight flash bulbs that had to be covered with wire screen because when you fired them from a 110V extension cord the bulbs would often explode. But, man, a couple of those would turn a foundry into a “clean, well lighted place.” Or: focusing a 12x20 with an F-11 lens on a large group in a dimly lit Masonic Temple and not knowing whether you succeeded until you souped the neg. We did a lot of finger crossing in those days.

But, yeah, I’ve been making a living with this, in one way or another, for the last forty years…been all-digital since ’96. I got one of the first DCS 460s off the line and never looked back. Along the way, sure, a lot of guys burned out, but for me it was always fun. I can’t think of better way to have spent my working years. And now with retirement approaching it’s going to be a great hobby.

[Harold_4074]

John--

Your post was a delight to read. Among other things, you remind me that I was right when I used to tell people "No, I don't plan to be a photographer when I grow up, but I'd like to be able to if I needed to." You see, my spending money in high school came from working as a stringer for the local papers in my home town, and I was sort of adopted by a couple of old-time news photographers as their protege. (The old news photographers were the First Sergeants in the photojournalistic infantry.)

It would be great to hear from one of these old guys; small-town photojournalism in the 1960s was not quite the same as it is now.

Dudley carried a Speed Graphic in one hand, with a cigarette in the other. He slung a leather bag containing 30 or so 4x5 filmholders over one shoulder, and the dry-cell battery pack for his Stroboflash IV over the other. This was a guy who stood about five-two, but he could really move even with all of that stuff.

Jim, on the other hand, was on the cutting edge: he shot a C330, with a Stroboflash, and used his bag for about 40 rolls of Tri-X. I spent most of my time with Jim, who promised me that if I would invest in a decent camera (Dad's Nikon S just didn't cut it for basketball games) he would guarantee enough work to pay for it. The used $60 Yashica and a Honeywell hammerhead flash (with two sets of nicads---remind me to describe what happens when you dump a set into your pants pocket with your car keys...) served for the remainder of my (working) photographic career, except for the day that I was posted next to a huge light pole at the first turnof a red-dirt stock car track, with a bag full of Press#5 flash bulbs and instructions to try and get two cars in each shot, it possible. I actually managed, even though the cars were going by about fifteen feet away.

Archival? We developed in straight d-76, fixed the negatives in Kodak Rapid, wiped them off with a towel, and printed them wet in order to make the sports page deadline. On more than one occasion, I started my Friday evening at a town 60 miles away, shooting the kickoff of a high school football game, and enough scrimmage to guarantee at least one good picture (remembering to always split the event across two rolls of film, just in case). On the way back, I would catch the last few plays and part of the half-time show in another town, bail out of there and make the last quarter of a hometown game so that I could get the film in to make the Saturday morning paper. (This was when offset printing was fairly new to newspapers, so being able to run a lot of pictures gave a distinct advantage over the papers still using hot type for printing.) But, hey--I got $5 and a byline for each shot that ran, and something like 5 cents per mile for gas money!

Bear in mind--I was just one of the hangers-on; the real pros did this and more at all hours of the day and night, and on any day of the week that something happened. It would be great to hear from some of those old guys, and see what they make of the modern megapixel-based, electronically transmitted and digitally processed photojournalism. It just doesn't seem the same to me.

To be honest, I don't miss the Sunday afternoons shepherding a room full of blue-haired matrons into a presentable banquet picture for the ceremonial handing over of the gavel. But, you know, I could still do it if I really had to!

[Bill_1856]

LOL, Harold!

[John W. Randall]

Thank you, John.

The more nitty-gritty posts about your past photographic experiences I read, the more of those experiences I want to read - and in as much detail as you are willing to reveal.

Yeah - do the book.

Best regards,

[Henry Ambrose]

John,
Speaking as a grumpy-old-bastard in training, you are my hero!

"One eventually attains the age when while still mildly appreciative of a bottle-blonde starlet sporting a silicone rack, would much rather spend the evening with a nice little cookie-baker with fat thighs."

After reading your recent posts (and the sentence quoted above in particular) I think you should take up writing as your second career!

[Jim Rice]

This is a great thread.

[Jim Ewins]

A great big thanks to John & the others who have made this thread a trip down memory lane. I guess I should stop the sometimes regret for not having gone to the Art Center and instead into engineering.

[John Kasaian]

John,

I really enjoyed your post. I did get the opportunity to meet a few of the old timers you're looking for. Great guys! There was an old time cigar chewing press photographer who was at the local paper forever and could make a Graphic hum like no one else. Another who shot food products with Commercial Ektars, as well as aerials out of B-25s over europe. I don't know how these fellows were to work for(though I would have loved to have had the chance) but they were kind enough to talk to me and help me through my own Chardonnay inhibited learning curve. I think a book is a great idea.