One of things I enjoy most is photography. I’ve had some professional training, but mostly I’ve learned myself.
My earliest learning experience was with my father who did some photography, but not a lot. However, he had an enlarger and some equipment and I learned to use it. When I reached Junior High School (a brand new school, opened the year I arrived), the school wanted a student photographer. I applied. I was taken under the wing of the school’s Art teacher who taught me to see the photograph, to take the shot, to process it in the school’s darkroom, and much more. I spent 2-1/2 years there attending every function and taking loads of pictures with a Yashica Twin Lens Reflex.
At home, I setup my own darkroom in different places depending on where we lived. Sometimes in the laundry room with a big curtain across to keep it dark. I got a load of old negatives from my father’s experience in World War II and processed a lot of them as well. Through high school and college, it was a hobby and nothing much more.
As I finished college and before I left for Grad School, the NROTC unit I was in needed to process a year’s worth of photos for their annual. I donated my dark room skills to creating all the prints they needed. Once I arrived at my new school (the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey California) I quickly learned that my here, Ansel Adams, lived and worked nearby in Carmel. I spent a lot of time at the Friends of Photography exhibits and saw Ansel at events. I never met him … I wouldn’t have had the courage to introduce myself. I also took some evening courses in photography at the local community college which introduced me to more practical work as well as theory. I volunteered my services as photographer to the PG school amateur theater group and did photographs of everything from initial planning through the shows. I got LOTS of experience in everything from practical portrait photography through a variety of other types of photography.
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