Any elder photo grunts still out there?

[John Cook]

Years ago, b&w LF photography was THE mainstream advertising medium and not simply a craft thingy with which dilettantes now dabble, in between ceramics classes and botox injections.

In those days, schools which considered photography an art, trained their budding photographic artistes in the art department. Those schools who believed photography was a trade, located their photo department in the same grungy building with the print shop and auto body shop.

I was trained to be an artiste at Art Center College of Design, where students agonized daily over the meaning of life and the existential character of hyper-reality and the human condition. It was beneath us to lean how to retouch nose hair in a portrait. Words like “history” became “historicity”. No one took “shots” or even “photographs” anymore; he only made “images”. Cable release in one hand, glass of white wine in the other.

A slightly out-of-focus image of a smashed mushroom became a paradigm into the obtuse tortured soul of the artiste. When I naively asked the student to elaborate, I was told that if he had to explain it to me I would never understand. He was probably right.

Perhaps you can tell that the art thing didn’t quite take, in my case. So after a few years of assisting some reely, reely big Hollywood photographers, I returned to New England to shoot 8x10 b&w commercial/industrial photography with other real men. Guys who look for the Guldens’ mustard in the gourmet aisle.

As a staff photographer in a large catalogue studio, I became a grunt in the old-time photographic infantry. Given an 11x14 Deardorff with an 8x10 reducing back and a few Mole-Richardson lights, I was expected to turn out a tastefully lit, properly exposed and tray-developed sheet of Super XX every fifteen to thirty minutes, all day long.

We shot Breck shampoo bottles, Absorbine Junior, S&W handguns, Milton Bradley games, Stanley tools, Church toilet seats and Columbia bicycles. Even did a catalogue of porta-potties and another of oak caskets.

Most negs were silhouetted with Kodak opaque. And each was contact printed onto between 25 and 500 sheets of Azo, before being ferro typed on huge gas-fired Pako drum dryers. It was a production line. Cases upon cases of glossies went out the door every day.

We didn’t have time to agonize over the human condition nor anything else. At those market rates for commercial photography, as Nike says, we had to just do it.

Unlike the artistic crowd, we had to keep moving. And our equipment and material decisions reflected that. We couldn’t spend a half hour frolicking in a tray of 1:100 Rodinal, nor did we have time nor budget to horse around with toning that many prints. We couldn’t afford Polaroid check shots. There wasn’t time to go into a trance over Merklinger’s Hinge Rule; we just bumped the massive wooden front standard with our elbow until it looked sharp.

Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine doing anything “archival”. Never heard the word. Like the old-timer on the RFD Channel said the other day about his antique manure spreader, "One of the best machines ever made, even if the manufacturer did refuse to stand behind it".

Very, very different from much of the conversations I read on today’s photographic forums.

I don’t mean to sound truculent, nor even vitriolic. I have enormous admiration for anyone who bothers to wrestle with a wooden camera these days. And I can certainly learn a whole bunch from the mad chemists brewing their Pyro potions. In fact, I sometimes feel like a Midas Muffler guy touring the Ferrari factory.

But I can’t help wondering how many of us elder photo grunts with chemically tainted brown fingernails who actually earned a living at this are still left here.

Semper Fi...

[Ben Calwell]

John,

I'm not an old "photo grunt," but you should write a book about your expriences in the industry. I always enjoy reading your informative and humorous posts.

[Thilo Schmid]

John,

a professional photographer of today will one day post a message somewhere, if there are some elder photo grunts with callosity on their fingers (from typing and mouse-clicking) and who have met with Microsoft Windows.

I'm happy that I do not have to make a living from photography. I'm not sure, if I would still like it. And if I would work on GM assembly line, I would still have appreciation for race technicans discussing fuel mixtures.

[francisco_5406]

I worked for plenty of old crumungeons. But I think you're different than most of them, because here you are, still curious if not a little burnt out. Most of the old farts I worked for were real bastards who got work because they sucked up, not because they were good photographers. In fact, some were barely acceptable photographers. And now they are either indigent or living off their wife's pension.

I bet you were the best in town in your day. It still shows.

[domenico Foschi]

John, Ben is right.
You should write a book. You are a very gifted writer and your love/frustration transpires through your words.
Take a shot at it!

[Pat Kearns]

John,
I enjoyed your post. I can relate to your turning out cases of prints only very slightly. In 1979 I was hired on by the studio that used to be the official photographers for the America's Junior Miss Pagent. At that time there were major corporate sponors like Coca-Cola, and Kraft Foods to name only two. That night myself and two other photographers had to shoot a food event sponsored by Kraft Foods. We had been given the names of the three winning girls that had submitted recipes for the Kraft party. We had to position ourselves near them to catch the surprised expressions when they were announced and then with the Kraft officials afterwards. When the party was over we had to drive back to the studio develop the film select the best shots of the winners and officals and then print, dry and prepare mailings of 5,000 8x10's before 6 am the next morning. RC paper wasn't an option. I had to man the fixing trays and was up to my elbows in fixer and prints that night. My experience, albiet, small compared to yours is memorable. I can't say I'm an "Old Photo Grunt", I'm just a photographer that is getting old and grunts. Cheers.

[Gem Singer]

Hi John,

I can relate with what you are saying, up to a point. The school that I attended many years ago was teaching me to be a "go- fer". You, on the other hand worked as a "grunt". Certainly a notch up from the training I received. I worked in a couple of photography "factories" early on. Being young and eager, I found it exciting, but not fun.

My father always said that photography was a rich man's hobby and a poor man's way of making a living. I soon began to realize what he was telling me, so I went back to school, changed my career, and have kept photography as my hobby for nearly sixty years now. I think that if I had decided to make photography my primary method of making a living, I would have burned out on it long ago.

How are you coming along with your Shopsmith?

[bob carnie]

Hi John

graduated in 1976 from photo school, I have been working in the industry ever since, started at 6am this morning made 6 cross processed prints, right now working on a lith print order and this evening doing some traditional warmtone images, I will wash the floor before I go. Yes my fingernails are brown and proud of it.

[wfwhitaker]

"But I can’t help wondering how many of us elder photo grunts with chemically tainted brown fingernails who actually earned a living at this are still left here."

Not me. I'm a dilettante.

[Ralph Barker]

Are you saying you weren't allowed to sip white wine while shooting those bottles of Breck Shampoo, John? ;-)

Fun post, even if you weren't allowed to wear your art-school beret. When I got out of the service in the '60s, I had high hopes of making photography a career. Then, I found out how little they made, and how expensive those art schools were. So, like Eugene, I just kept it as a (sometimes affordable) hobby.

[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.

[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...)

[Matt Mengel]

I need to post up for my teacher- He seems to parallel you John, in attitude and experience working for Kraft foods, also using 11x14 view. Worked with a crotchety old portrait guy to do a portrait in mayor Daleys office of some catholic guy who went on to Washington. BS'ed his way into the darkroom for at a job with the Chicago Police. Life magazine, Look magazine....was fired and rehired by both a couple of times :) To him photography is a job- (I think there's alot of artistry in him but he'll never admit it). He had 5 kids to feed, and when there were no photography jobs to be had he drove a truck or hung iron. Whenever he looks at my prints he crops the sh** out of them like an art director. I've learned alot from that guy and continue to do so. I'm only 32, but I think I can really relate to what your talking about. Email me off forum and I could put you in touch with him. I dont think he even owns a computer, and if I brag about knowing him and tell people his name he'd kick my butt.
I'd love to sit down with the two of you and listen to the stories. There are still a few left.

[Al Seyle]

"When you young fellows spend 13 cents for a piece of film you will think twice about tripping the shutter."

When I was at Brooks it was up to 15 cents. Super-XX.

I like your style, John-- I want a copy of that book!

[tribby]

why ted's so old he was at the battle of hastings.

1059? same age as dirt, ted,

me

p.s. dinosaurs need not be so old. i went to photo school in the mid 80's, a mere decade before the digital revolution(we lost that war you boys). and i'm thankful my teachers made sure we knew our way around a lf cam by the second semester. i was talking to a new hire here at the paper night before last. turns out he moonlights as an architectural photog, and is graduating in a month with a bachelor's degree in photojournalism. he seemed taken aback when i told him i had no interest in borrowing his 20d with a shiny, new t&s lens and that i was still most happily analogging along in 'solid state' mode. he then admitted he'd never shot a single frame of medium format film. i asked myself, 'how is that possible?' then i ruefully remembered yon gory war.

[paulr]

I enjoyed your post, too, John, although I feel that you are lumping together some ideas that don't necesarily go together. Or maybe creating some dichotomies that are not necessarily dichotomies. The idea that wrestling with the meaning of life (being an artist) equals being impractical or without any technical ability has plenty of counter examples. As does the idea that being an artist means being a pompous ass ("if i have to explain it, you'll never understand it ...").

I completely believe that you saw plenty of examples of both ... most of us have! But I think there's more to be learned from the example set by artists for whom art was more than a pretense, a lifestyle, or an excuse for a technical (or social) handicap.

I'm sure you can think of more than a few, if not from your personal experience, than at least from the history books. I know a few who are still breathing ... some who aren't even old!

[Kim Schäfermeyer]

Hi John: I miss my brown fingernails. And my green ones and rose....And I MISS: Indiatone, Portralure, Azo, Portriga.... hell, I almost miss Ektalure! I trained as a chemist in the days when calculaus was required and it was a science. So you might empathize with my approach to photography as a discipline. My gold photographs remembered the winter day at dawn when the light turned the early spring ice flow in the Missouri river into tangerine dognuts! And then there was vermillion, and blue and the choclate brown from Nelson's. I miss the delight of a tray developed pyro negative, in the orphan format, 5x7. There are papers designed by CPAs now. And while I feel betrayed by the Great Yellow Father and his bastard cousins, I think it is the same in other disciplines who have lost their way. Medicine and Law among them. They never asked me if the price was too high. Some days I think I will return to the solitary field that lured me into that commercial world you know so well. But I think I will have to learn to tolerate marginalized materials, or take-up platinium emulsions again. Robbie and Sura Steinberg can you please come out of retirement? I have learned to clone sheep. So forgive me if I am close to digging up Alfred, Edward and Edward, Fred, and Ansel and Andy Tau. Stem cells indeed. I think this is the book, or it's beginning. I think you should collect and edit it's content into that other orphan friend; a book. Kindest Regards, Kim S..

[paulr]

I seem to remember a lot of letters going back and forth among folks like Alfred, Edward, and Edward, all complaining about the same thing: Everything's going to hell, no one cares anymore, the good materials are all gone, the golden era is behind us. Of course this was circa 1920 to 1940.

This state of change, when everyone's favorite material vanishes some time after people have forgotten it hasn't always been here, has been the perpetual state of photography since the beginning. Weston almost hung up his hat when commercial platinum papers vanished. But he didn't. He learned how to print with silver, and went on to do his best work with it. Now wave after wave of silver papers are going the same route. Those of us entrenched in the past don't want to hear about carbon pigment inkjet printing, or whatever's going to come along later, but I'm willing to bet this: it's going to be another golden age (just like right now is someone's golden age), and it's going to end someday too.

If this still sounds like bad news, there's always the option of staying in the past. If you've got good reason to do so, you can do work. It worked for Atget ... he used materials and techniques that were decades obsolete in his time. And it's working for a lot of people now, which explains the growing cottage industry of vintage processes, including photographers formulary, the re-emergence of platinum papers, and gather of groups like this one (even if it required the new fangled internet) bringing together people who think the world has gone to hell.

[Andy Andrews]

Yes, John Cook SHOULD write a book or, at least, an article for submission to a photography publication. It would amuse both young and old and put things into perspective. Kids today ask,
"Did you really use cameras without batteries?" Or, "How could you get the shot, with only one piece of film in that big holder?" A lot of times, I didn't was the answer, but said, "Experience, son. After awhile, you learn to anticipate what the subject's going to do and you make sure you're ready" Ha! Sometimes, the #*+* flashbulb wouldn't fire or the synch cord would part company with the shutter. There were all kinds of fixes to keep that from happening, but it still happens today. Why Prontor couldn't come up with a bayonet socket instead of a push-on contrivance is a mystery to me...and a lot of other people! But I digress. What I would like to say to you younger photogs out there is you have never had it so good! Everything that can possibly be automated has been automated, or so it seems. Just remember that when you rely on someone else's software, you give up some of your own judgement and flexibility. And what the engineers put into even the finest professional cameras by the way of features will not replace creativity and your own individual viewpoint. It just makes it easier for more to accomplish more, quicker.
Funny, as I look back on my life, I seemed to have more spare time when there were fewer 'labor saving' devices around. Has anyone else out there noticed this too?

[Christopher Nisperos]

John, I don't know if this makes me a "photo grunt", but I did spend a bit of time taking a photography course at Laney Junior College in Oakland, California (early 1970's) under an ex-Navy instructor and great photo teacher named Bill (Something). (out of respect to this man, if any alumnus of Laney remember his name, please post it!). The assistant professor was a Navy man too.

Our textbook was the Navy Manual, "Photographer's Mate I and II". We learned to use the Speed Graphic, basic portrait lighting (military style), develop sheet film. "YOU'D BETTER LOG HOW MANY SHEETS HAVE PASSED THROUGH THE HC-110, DAMNIT!" , he'd yell. He was a really tough guy and the course was memoriable. He seemed to have known absolutely everything about photography, even being able to do basic repairs on shutters while talking to you at his desk. Years after, fellow students I'd meet from that course still feed a strong comraderie.

Thanks for evoking a nice memory, John.

[John_4185]

John Cook, you are an enigma. I cannot tell how old you really are. In one post you mentioned that you were in college in '68 which one might guess makes you about sixty. That is not old.

Art Center School, Rhode Island School of Design, San Francisco Art Institute, Chicago Art Institute, IIT, and of course any state school I wished ... I checked them all out and was admitted to each but elected to follow my father's laboring Irish family penchant for an early family and daily drugery so I chose, and won, news photography positions. A mistake? Why, I could have marinated my young brain exclusively in the discourse of High Art rather than contrasting Art and Work on the grinding daily basis, but I would not have become stronger for the constant tension between the two. Today I am surrounded by Art Scholars who have no craft other than the literature of criticism. Thank God for the fate that let me be involved in both worlds at once so that I gained a sense of humor, otherwise the Irish angst may have led me to become a kind of Jack the Ripper who chose to render his victims in their own medium, that is to say I'd have become be a writer and possibly dead by now.

jj - County Cork, Oxford, Chicago, rual America - a downwardly mobile kind of person