My First Camera

I guess some kind of art is just in my bloodline. Yeah, yeah all kids like to make a mess with crayons, pencils and whatever they can get their hands on. For me it was a fascination with how you could take a flat piece of paper and put a pencil to it and make something that looked like more than that. Something with more than just 2 dimensions. Of course I'm writing this with my current understanding rather than that of a 2 year old...

Anyway, it wasn't just a passing thing with me. I loved to draw. My favorite was to copy pictures of famous artists out of art books , or to copy pictures of the human body from the encyclopedia. You know, the cut-away pages showing the various systems, like blood, skeletal, etc. I loved drawing with colored pencils.

Then when I was in junior high school an uncle gave me a really cool, big camera. It was a twin lens reflex Yashika. It was amazing! A whole different animal from the "Brownie" point and shoot cameras of the era. So I went to the library and checked out books on photography. Bought some black and white film and learned how to make photographs.

The very best part about carrying that big camera around was when I would go to the mall with it, I could stop any pretty girl I saw and they would let me take their photograph! That was a LOT of FUN! I was immediately hooked on photography at that point! And I've been "hooked" on it ever since! And people remain my favorite subjects to this day.

I don't know what happened to that Yashika camera. I know it was with me when I took my first photography class in high school, but by the time I finished high school I had replaced it with a 35mm Pentax K1000. That camera had a zoom lens, and was practically indestructible! And it was the camera I used on my very first professional photography job...with the Camarillo Daily News the summer after my senior year! More on that in another post.
ALOHA!