Answer me this…April 25, 2024

What are your hobbies and how did you get into them?

I started taking pictures when my son was a toddler. I had a friend who was a photographer. One day, he gave me an old camera with a Zeiss f2.8 50mm lens on it. The camera was nothing much — a Practica made somewhere in Europe.

Maybe Hungary or Czechoslovakia? It’s not important. What was important was the lens. Zeiss made great lenses 55 year ago and they make great lenses today. I might not have had a premium camera, but I had a fantastic lens.

My friend gave me a couple of rolls of film as I was heading off on vacation. The camera didn’t have any electronics. No battery or autofocus. No light meter. You wound the film into the camera manually, then set it to the correct speed for that film. To focus, you turned the lens until it looked sharp. Then depending on the light, you set the lens to the right opening.

I didn’t have a light meter so I used the “paper meter” that came in boxes of Kodak film. The paper listed light sources and told you which f-stop worked for each kind of light. Until a few years later when I got a camera with a light meter, I always knew how to set the stop by looking at the light.

When I came back from that vacation, I had 72 pictures — all black and white because my friend could develop black and white and I wouldn’t have to pay to develop them. This first vacation was when I realized the place we were staying was the same place where Alfred Eisenstadt summered annually on Martha’s Vineyard. I had seen his pictures in “Life” and “Look” magazines.

He had published a number of books about the Vineyard based on his photographs. I looked at his pictures and wherever he had taken them, I went there. I found the same position he was in when he took the picture. I learned to take pictures from Eisenstadt’s pictures.

When years later I met Eisie in person, I really enjoyed his company. He was my mentor even though we’d never met. Garry had just done a story on him for his TV station. We got to know him and became friends. We invited him to our parties and when his caretaker needed a break, we’d stay with him — he was in his mid-90s — for a day or an afternoon to give Lucy some time off. He was old and forgetful, but he remembered every picture he’d taken and could tell you what camera he used, what film, and what made him take that picture in that way. It was remarkable.

I wrote about this a few time, so if you are interested you can check out this post “Meeting Alfred Eisenstadt.”

My pictures came out looking remarkably like Eisenstadt’s. These were the first pictures I’d taken with a “real” camera. My friend was enthusiastic about them. I was a little dubious … but I got bought more film and I kept taking pictures.

I took pictures of the baby. the neighborhood and landscapes for every vacation we took. I did a bit of studio work, all in black and white.

My friend moved on and I had to use color film. I couldn’t develop film at home. By the late 1970s, every camera had a light meter. The rest of widgets would soon follow.

My final non-digital camera was a Canon Rebel using film. Before I’d payed for the Canon, digital was born. I cannot express how happy I was to be able to take an unlimited number of pictures without owing hundreds of dollars to whoever developed them.

I have never stopped taking pictures. I have owned many cameras including a Bronica, a Rolleiflex, a couple of Nikons and Leicas. I starting using an Olympus way back when. It was always a favorite because they were lighter than most SLRs, easy to handle and had good lenses.

There were a few times when I worked more or less as a professional, but professional photography is a hard way to make a living. Writing’s not easy either but I always seemed to know how to write. In photography, there was a lot of technical stuff I never learned. I’ve picked some up over the years and it no longer matters that I can’t develop film.

Writing kind of fell out of my fingers into the typewriter and after that, it fell into a computer. I never had to study it, though I’ve never stopped learning. I think I write better now than I did when I wrote every day of my working life. I guess you could say writing has returned to being a hobby.

Other than photography and writing? I grow plants. Indoors. I never enjoyed outdoor gardening and I’m happy as long as my orchids keep blooming.

Categories: #Photography, Anecdote, Childhood, Daily Prompt, story

Tags: #ANSWER ME THIS, #Photography, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Camera, Daily prompt, Hobby, Marilyn Armstrong