I stood looking down at my hands and what was in them, in the middle of a morning, outdoors on our gopher-ruined lawn. I realized I had a Kodak Brownie camera with film inside of it, loaned from one of my parents. I looked through the viewfinder and everything changed; the world had become two dimensional and was contained within a small frame.
The Brownie, essentially a pinhole camera allowing very little control to the photographer, had a button to push to take a picture, a viewfinder screen to look at with one eye and a crank to forward the film. That was pretty much it. You don't need much else as a kid, really. You just need to look at things and see them, and then keep looking and seeing as you decide what to capture - or stop - on film.
I took a roll, about 12 pictures, and they came back to me in a week or so in an envelope handed to me on another morning. I scrutinized them one by one and then again, peering at them and seeing what the camera had done with the light, the shapes and the colors. Most things were fuzzy, as if Vasoline had been smeared on the cheap little lens, and it could have been scratched and abused by the time I got my hands on it.
We lived in a rural area, and I spent a lot of time outdoors, so the camera that day served as a catalyst for my eye to begin looking around at my surroundings, my home, my cats, my family. It was as though I came more into focus rather than what I was looking at because I had to examine colors and patterns deliberately for the first time. I was about 10 years old, perhaps younger, and I only used the camera one or two other times, but I put all the pictures into an album I still have.
Fast forward about six years, maybe seven. In high school, a small single-lens reflex camera was put into my hands, again without asking for it. It felt like it just landed there, and I was told, "There's a roll of film in there. Go take some pictures." Pretty simple. I was given the most rudimentary instructions and was sent away. I walked again as if I was seeing the places around me for the first time and spent a good hour or more walking around the school and nearby wooded neighborhood looking at things, shooting the roll.
I came back to the classroom, handed over the camera, went home. The next day, the roll was developed and hanging by a small clip on a line strung across the classroom, a graphic arts room. I was taken into the darkroom and, for the first time, saw a contact print being made. When it was dry, I scrutinized every little 35 mm print meticulously, seeing in two-dimensional black and white what I'd always barely noticed in color.
In those two encounters, I was triggered, permanently exposed, if you will, to photography. It was a perfect storm of naive youth, creative mind and access to information all converging in a potent mix in which I was completely and immediately immersed. This technology called photography was completely mine almost within the blink of an eye. One minute, it seemed, I was a young schoolgirl minding my own business and the next I was practically inhaling chemicals, caressing cameras, fondling film and going entirely insane about every possible aspect of photography that I could absorb. I was handed books and read all of them, memorizing every page, consuming them like drugs. This was love, deep and undeniable. I found it seriously amusing at times to see myself constantly using my viewfinder to see the world. But, on the other hand, I was infatuated with creating images, manipulating light, understanding focal planes and exposure times.
The third camera was my own Canon FTb SLR that I bought with money I'd saved for a few years, a camera I still have now. There has never been another tool that felt quite so perfect in my hands, and no other implement for creativity has ever been quite as exciting as my Canon was and has been to me.
I saw and understood light, learned the zone system Ansel Adams had figured out, tried out filters and a new lens. Then, unfortunately, I began to feel frustrated by the mismatch between what I saw and imagined and what I could produce in the school darkroom. I cleaned it meticulously, spent hours and hours in its dark confines trying to make great prints but did not progress beyond a certain point. The enlargers were sturdy and fine for beginners as were the storage and mixing containers for chemicals, but lots of kids were using the space. Spills, dents and dings took their toll on equipment, so prints were good enough but no better.
What I didn't know - still being pretty naive really - was the severe lack of funding for the graphic arts classroom and the high cost of the materials I really needed. The instructor provided as much for interested students as he could, but eventually the material and space limited my progress. Then I graduated and put my camera aside more and more often until I was without it much more often than I carried it.
I tried building my own darkroom in a spare closet at our house, probably one of the smallest darkrooms ever used, but it fed my interest for a while. I eventually lost interest in maintaining the darkroom, moved away and never rebuilt another, and my intense interest gradually dissipated.
I went to a presentation and exhibition opening for a fine nature photographer named Charles Cramer today. It so happens that he took up a camera at almost the exact same time that I did, but his interest never waned, and he did not let discouragement hinder his progress and eventually mastered of the art of photography. His work is a great gift to us all. His images and talent have matured wonderfully. They are lyrical, magical and ethereal in character, suffused with a quality his friends call "Charlie light."
I'm not saying I'd be as good as he is today. I'm just noticing the way paths wend their way through time and take us here and there, through thick and thin. I let my discouragement stop me and he did not. Now his images are so beautiful and pure that they make everyone, including me, feel like it's an easy thing to do, which is always the mark of a fine master craftsman at work.
I'm still clicking every so often, and I think sometime I'll invest in an exciting digital camera and learn to use Photoshop or Lightroom fluently. A third exposure may do the trick.
Recommended: See Charles Cramer's work now until Jan. 9, 2011 at Sunset Center in Carmel where The Center For Photographic Arts (CFPA) is located. There are 60 transcendent, beautiful images to admire.
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