Many years ago, we moved from Brevard County back to Tallahassee. In the process of moving, the moving company "lost" a few boxes, including the ones in which I had packed all of my negatives and prints - all the photos I had taken from 1972 until we moved in the mid-1990's. For me, it was a loss that I knew could never be replaced. Then, last night I was going through some bookcases and stumbled across an old scrapbook. The scrapbook contained a few black & white prints I had made, an Ilford 11X14 photo paper envelope with a few test prints, and a yellowed newspaper clipping with a photo I had entered in a photo contest in 1975 which won first prize (above). Oh, the memories. Images that had long since faded from my memory were right in front of me. What a treat.
For the most part, I can't begin to remember any technical information about these images - they could have been taken with any number of different cameras and lenses, from Pentax to Mamiya to Nikon to Olympus. I owned different gear made by all of these companies between 1972 and 1995. For many of these images, I can't even tell you if they were taken with 35mm cameras or a medium format Mamiya I had for a while. Many of the images don't ring any bells as to where they were taken. I'm just thrilled to have a few examples of my very early dabblings in photography.
Included in the stuff I found was one of the first sports photos I ever took as a staff photographer for the FSU student newspaper. I remember making it a point to attend the track meet at which I took the photo because Harvey Glance, a world class sprinter from Auburn University, was going to be featured in a highly publicized showdown with an FSU sprinter (can't remember his name) who was also a world class sprinter. The image was taken with a Nikon F, no clue as to the lens, at ASA 1600 (what we used to call ISO in the day). What we did back then was shoot Kodak Tri-X film, rated at ASA 400, and we "pushed" it to ASA 1600. In other words, we would shoot it at ASA 1600 and then adjust the film development (basically the development time and the developer used) to compensate for the "pushed" ASA. Any prints made from this process were very, very grainy - noise, for those of you who have never shot film. We would develop the film immediately after an event, print a contact sheet from the negatives, use a red grease pen to circle the negative(s) to be printed, and made 5X7 prints which were turned in for publication. The image below is a scanned version of the 5X7 print I made in 1974 or so of the big showdown at the FSU track.
As a photographer for the student paper, I also had to shoot lots of non-sports events. For example, when Seals & Crofts performed at FSU's Homecoming Pow Wow in 1974 or 1975 (can't remember), I was there with my girlfriend (now my spousal unit) partaking in the concert and thoroughly enjoying my backstage credentials. Again, the images were taken with a Nikon F body, probably using my 50mm f1.4 lens, and Tri-X film pushed to ASA 1600.
Naturally, I would love to be able to get my hands on the negatives and scan them instead of 5X7 or even 8X10 prints - the quality is sorely lacking - but on the other hand, I feel like I just found a bunch of long lost relatives. Beggars can't be choosers, and as of yesterday, I never thought I'd see any of this stuff again, so I'll take what I have and be glad for it.
Here are a couple more images. I will be posting all of what I found on my Facebook page in a photo gallery.
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