|
table of contents |
There is only one extant photograph of me as a small child. My mother told me my two older brothers destroyed the camera shortly after it was taken. Interesting, in light of the fact that they would become my source for cameras when I was old enough to take my own pictures.
On the left is my oldest brother Everett, then me and my sister Fern, with my brother Paul on the right.
The first of those was a small, black plastic 127 camera my brother Everett ordered from an ad on the back of a comic book (for a whopping $2.95, as I recall) which I immediately glommed onto. It was an awful camera with a cheap plastic lens that distorted the images but I didn't care. The standard 127 format yielded tiny photos 1½" x 3 ½" in size, but this camera took two photos per frame, producing even tinier pictures. To me that was a plus because it meant I could take twice as many pictures per roll. Immediately I began to push that camera beyond what its meager capabilities would allow, often with disappointing results.
Early in my article I mention the plastic camera that took tiny distorted images. Here is one of the experimental photos I took with this very camera. I often noticed how the shoreline of the river looked like real cliffs in miniature so I took this car out to the river one day for the express purpose of taking this shot. I had to actually get into the water and lie down to get the proper perspective. The automobile is a small hard rubber toy car (1936 Ford) which I placed on the river bank. I had fun asking friends where they thought the photo was taken. Some guessed the Badlands of South Dakota.