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Thread: A Senior Newbie

  1. #1

    A Senior Newbie

    I am a Nikon user and have been for almost 45 years. I have a full film based darkroom and finishing facilities where I can print up to 20x30 prints. I do some 6x6cm with Rollie equipment and 4x5 with a Toyo rail camera. Although I was trained as a photojournalist at the University of Missouri in Columbia, I was a military and commercial pilot before I retired.

    I am in the middle of transitioning from film to digital, but I will hold on to my 35mm bodies and lenses for work that would be better shot on film. Although I have a fairly extensive film set up, I only have one Nikon digital SLR body, a couple wireless remote strobes and a single new technology, autofocus, zoom lens.

    I really enjoy working in black and white and am partial to well composed images of people in their normal surroundings in picture story or documentry style as well as striking phstographs of landscapes in either color or black and white. My favorite photographers include W. Eugene Smith, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alfred Eisenstadt, Ansel Adams, A Aubrey Bodine, David Douglas Duncan, Steve McCurry, Jodi Cobb, Margaret Bourke-White, George Silk, Larry Burrows, Gordon Parks, Robert Capa, Yousf Karsh, Gordon Miji, Ralph Crane, Werner Bishof, Irving Penn, Elliot Erwitt, Sam Abell, Eugene Atget, Louis Hine, Cecil Beaton, and Jacob Riis.

    Although I work primarily with 35mm, I do use 4x5 and enjoy that format very much. I even have an almost mint 4x5 Pacemaker Speed Graphic. A 4x5 Speed Graphic was really the camer I used in high school my junior year. That experience served me well because in the School of Journalism the asst. prof and I were the only ones who knew enough about it to use it for shooting pix of the football games along the sidelines for the dail newspaper and UPI.

  2. #2

    Join Date
    May 2006
    Location
    Westminster, MD
    Posts
    1,653

    Re: A Senior Newbie

    Welcome. Perhaps with encouraging from here you'll explore more fully LF. It's the difference between flying a Piper Cub and a triple 7. Grin. Well many be ULF is like a 777. 4x5 is more like a 737-400. Doulbe Grin.

    So what airframe did you fly in the service?
    When I grow up, I want to be a photographer.

    http://www.walterpcalahan.com/Photography/index.html

  3. #3

    Join Date
    May 2006
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    Kaneohe, Hawaii
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    1,390

    Re: A Senior Newbie

    Welcome from Hawaii. I'm glad you decided to join us, this is a pretty good community. I haven't been shooting as long as you have, only about 35 years, but I find my passion for film growning daily - I expect to shoot twice as much film this year as last year.

  4. #4
    Moderator Ralph Barker's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 1998
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    Rio Rancho, NM
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    5,034

    Re: A Senior Newbie

    Welcome to the LF Forum. We'll get you using that 4x5 in no time, and perhaps thinking of something even larger in format.

  5. #5

    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
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    Re: A Senior Newbie

    Welcome from an airline pilot in Vancouver; I'm just completing Airbus A340 training, but hoping to retire off the B-777 in exactly 3 yrs.,8 mths, & 29 days! Who's counting?

  6. #6

    Join Date
    May 2006
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    Re: A Senior Newbie

    Quote Originally Posted by Uri Kolet View Post
    Welcome from an airline pilot in Vancouver; I'm just completing Airbus A340 training, but hoping to retire off the B-777 in exactly 3 yrs.,8 mths, & 29 days! Who's counting?

    What you aren't going to hang around for the Dreamliner?

  7. #7

    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Location
    San Joaquin Valley, California
    Posts
    9,597

    Re: A Senior Newbie

    Welcome aboard! If digital is "fly by wire" then you'll probably find LF is more "fly by cable & pulley held together with nicropress sleeves" I never flew anything more exotic than a PA-18-135 myself, but it sure was fun!
    "I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White

  8. #8

    Re: A Senior Newbie

    Thanks guys for all of the responses and the encouragement, that's one of the reasons I joined this forum. Although I have the skill set required, I seldom do much 4x5 work. The last serious 4x5 work I did was photographing some violins for a violin makers brochure several years ago, but now that I have the ability to go digital with the 35mm format, I probably will shoot more with the 4x5. I would really like to do some LF B&W pictorials including landscapes and buildings or cityscapes.

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