Those Were The Days

Day 129: The man had a Volkswagen Beetle, a suitcase full of photographic equipment and a walk-in closet in his house which he'd converted into a black-and-white darkroom. When he invited me over to look at his prints with the added temptation of a fondue dinner, how could I sensibly refuse? The ultimate outcome of that dinner was that we got married eight months later, and thus a new chapter opened in my photographic career.

I laugh to admit it now, but Bruce's Mamiya-Sekor terrified me. There were too many settings, too many things to remember. I enjoyed photography, but my experience was limited to a box Brownie and a Polaroid Instamatic, not exactly what you'd call "good equipment" although they'd served my plebian purposes well over the years. Still, I resisted learning to use a "real" camera until I found myself planning a backpacking trip with my mother. The week before we were scheduled to leave, I sat down with Bruce and had him show me the basic functions, i.e., how to set the ASA, how to spot-meter and so on. That he trusted me in the wilds with his good camera rather surprised me, but then, his only outdoor experience consisted of a campout in a park as a Boy Scout and a forced-march dayhike I'd compelled him to take. We both had a lot to learn about each other! I returned home a week later with some spectacular images of mist rising on a mountain lake, of towering cliffs, of wildflower meadows and of wildflowers. I'd found a new passion in my husband's hobby, and as long as I promised not to break the camera, he was willing to let me take it whenever I went hiking.

Several years later when I went to work for the Park, one of my colleagues offered the identical twin of Bruce's camera to me at a price I couldn't refuse. It came with a zoom lens and a warning that the spot-meter was broken. By then, I'd learned to make educated guesses as to settings, and in any case, always bracketed my shots. With "his" and "hers" Mamiya-Sekors, we burned through rolls of film by the case. We both liked shooting in black-and-white because we could develop it at home, but as I became more keen on taking wildflower and bird photos, I gravitated toward color. Finally, we moved from the house with the walk-in darkroom and had to resort to commercial processing all around.

I owe a lot to Bruce for teaching me the tricks of the trade, and for allowing me to take his camera into the field during those early years. Had it not been for his insistence that I learn to use the Mamiya-Sekor, I might be doing nothing more than point-and-shoot snapshots today.