In the engineering curriculum at Cal Poly, when I was a youngster, there was a require course called “Audio-Visual Aids for Engineers.” Unlike this day and age, the course consisted of building a story board using black and white photography and making presentations from a transparency projector.
The course required one to shoot the pictures, develop the film, and then take the negatives into the darkroom to print. By the time I got to the darkroom part I was hooked. As a starving college student I could not afford a camera or film. When I got commissioned as a Navy pilot, and had an income, I dropped by home and convinced my Dad to part with the Argus C-3 35mm camera he had bought in the Philippines in about 1953.
I got married shortly thereafter. I shot a few rolls of film and discovered it was a very expensive hobby for someone who could barely afford a bottle of wine a month. I “invested” in a film roll holder, some re-usable film cans, and when the money became available, bought a roll of film, which was good for about 250 pictures if I recall. Then I bought a developing tank and the die was cast. I managed to find a very cheap and not very good enlarger for about $45. Now I had everything to develop film and make prints except paper and chemicals. Of course, it meant stealing the baking dishes from the kitchen every time I wanted to get set up.
When we had a baby on the way, we decided to rent a slightly larger house. My squadron mate and I worked feverishly on the third bedroom, with a home made table, some wiring, and aluminum foil over the windows. Imagine my wife’s surprise when she discovered the effort was not on the nursery, but a darkroom. This was the beginning of a life long love affair with the image.
Over the years I finally stepped up to color slides from black and white, and then prints. Pictures from the air added a new dimension. I was a late adopter of digital, since I had century old negatives from which I could draw an image, but my quarter inch tapes gave way to floppy disks, which gave way to not-so-floppy discs, which gave way to CDs, then DVDs, etc. I did not see the point. But the advantages to digital finally won over and my photography improved immensely from real time discovery of what I was doing (or doing wrong.)
Many of my life’s adventures were chronicled on film and digital media. Not all were high quality imagery, for sure, but you are welcomed to experience some of that at my personal website, www.gunnersmoon.com. From my grandmother and mother, I inherited the photographer’s eye. With that came the concept that there is beauty in everything, and one just has to find it. As such, you will see many pictures from my surroundings that do not fall into the usual categories, but I find attractive.
For years I was a “purist” photographer, only wanting to replicate the feeling and grandeur as it existed in nature. My original darkroom ventures were just to bring out that quality. As I gained understanding in the digital darkroom I have taken advantage of technology to occasionally enhance what the eye sees in the interest of artistic license. While you won’t see sailors riding dolphins, you might well see hues and tones that were not on the lens side of the camera. Obviously, art is in the eye of the beholder, so I will leave it to you if I have produced something that reaches your inner depths.