EYE CANDY
I’m not sure when it actually began, sometime around 1970ish I got my hands on a Canon Ftb with an “auto loader” that put a scratch on about every other roll of film I put through it. It was worth every cent I paid for it (can you spell xero?) and fully manual although it did have a light meter incorporated in the viewfinder. Whether photography found me or I found it remains one of the world’s great mysteries; suffice to say the gravitation was mutual.
At the time, Time Life Books was TV pitching a series of photograph “how-to” books that could be had for $9.95 + tax & shipping every month for 12 months. The series covered the gamut including the darkroom part 0f the equation. I signed up and buriedmy booty in the books and somehow came out on the other side with something more than a hobby.
Armed and equipped with enough to make me peligroso, I landed a gig on the high school yearbook/newspaper staff my sophomore year and there was a pretty decent darkroom with a seemingly unlimited supply of paper and chemicals. Natch, at this time paper & chemicals were cheap, especially when the Austin Unified School District was footing the tab. My “instructor”, a peer named Paul Miekeska (who happened to own a ’49 Caddy painted fire engine red with a back seat big enough to hold The Rockette’s) showed me the ropes of mixing chemicals, loading stainless steel reels and developing prints through a Besler 23CXL with a Nikor 50mm f3.5 enlarging lens.
Every photographer talks and writes about the first time they slide a sheet of white paper into a clear bath and watch as their image materializes in the scope of about a minute. The magic is motivating and one becomes confused of whether to stay in the darkroom repeating the glory or grab their camera to fuel the fire with more images. I was no different. And to add more jingle to the jangle I enjoyed the solitude and darkness with KRMH-FM sprouting album oriented rock in the background. A near perfect storm that was to follow me off and on for years. (Sidebar: six years later I sat behind a microphone in the studios of what was KRMH and how now become KLBJ; one of those goes around comes around things).
I quit my job at “The Pizza Place” and the late night shifts washing dishes were replaced with late night shifts in the darkroom, the smell of pepperoni was replaced with the smell of glacial acetic acid and my rough dishpan hands were replaced wrinkled finger tips and a deep amber tint on my nails. My new job at Ellison Photo (owned by Mr. Chalberg, a self professed “Swedish Jew” that attended an Episcopal Church on Sundays…you think I’m confused?) helped me replace my Ftb with a spanking new F1 (first generation mind you). I was born again, from blue collar bus boy to white collar mall rat toting a professional 35mm camera.
By the time college rolled around I found a gig working in a first class darkroom where I processed prints from an electron microscope as or free access for my personal use. Things photographic petered out by my junior year as mounting college debt and three jobs kept me too busy to be creative save for mustering enough pithy repartee to pick up Mary Jo Rottencrotch at Uncle Nasty’s where I DJ’d three to four nights a week. I digress, we’ll cover that subject on another page.
Twenty years had passed before I picked up the camera again. Deep pockets led me to a Hassled and a$140 per month tab that gave me unlimited access to First Professional Darkroom on Ocean Park in Silly Monica, CA. I spent about three years once again knee deep in chemicals and had graduated to the complexities of selenium toner and X-tol diluted 3:1, 17 minutes at 72 degrees Fahrenheit. Funny how things like that remain etched on the hard drive between my ears. Deep though my pockets were, digital became de riguer and one by one, analog photographic manufacturers disappeared like dinosaurs. The end was near.
The transition time between near and now was awkward, the mechanics of photography entered into a kind of puberty and things didn’t work as advertised. A 3 mega pixel camera could produce no better than an 8X10 with enough ”noise” to wake up the neighborhood. The landscape of photography was changing faster than the size of Britney Spears’ bra and I couldn’t keep up with the technology. The romance was gone, it disappeared like Fabio, Rico Suave and David Cassidy.
I tried to resuscitate it with my first and only “class.” A seminar in San Miguel Allende where the instructor instructed me to take a picture that was out of focus as my departing assignment. I did and became so self absorbed by the image I thought I could never do any better. I came to a fork in the photographic phreeway and took the Jerry Seinfeld exit quitting at what I perceived as the top of my game.
The nectar of my creative juices turned to an old friend with a few strings attached. Six to be exact save for a Rickenbacker that recently left me for a new home justoutside of London via a travel agency known as eBay. I’ve hardly reached the top of my game as regards the guitar or music, I liken it to golf — a game you can never really win but only get better.
And I suppose you could say the same for photography. Paint me into either picture and mix in my M.O. of reaching heights and getting bored then moving on to some other challenge. But now, with enough birthday cake in my belly I find the circle to be unbroken and feel my auditory affections being replaced with a visual vehemence. Hear me goes again.
Thanks fer readin’
The Ken Bobographer
