My photography journey, First Milestone
Today I am going to talk about some of the milestones that have marked my photography career.
I was about 10 years old and had always curiosity of how things worked, in this sense I used to accompany my mother downtown to the pharmacy we owned. During the day I would go sightseeing places that were around, one of which was a Kodak photo lab.
My mother knew the owner, so I was able to visit the entire lab and learn how they operated. I was mesmerized when a blank paper created a black and white image under a red safety light.
It would not take long that I would be carrying home a photographic kit that was sold at this lab and would start playing with chemicals and making contact prints of negatives that I could find around. As you can see, I still have the 3 plastic trays that came with the kit.
Later I would discover at our basement that there was a full photography equipment, with an enlarge, large steel trays, chemicals, and photographic paper. As the basement had just a few small windows, I decided to convert it into my darkroom, by covering the windows with cardboards. Again, all the development and printing were done using negatives of images taken possibly by my father.
As I needed to take my own images, I used a Kodak Brownie camera. My first film development was a disaster, I thought that I could use the red safety light to load the film into the tank. Obviously, a dark grey negative came out and useless.
I would play developing for some time until I finished school and started working, where I was able to purchase my first camera in NY, during a stopover while traveling to London (it was Yashica automatic). Took color images with no technique or knowledge on how to take pictures, I just followed what my eyes guided.
Late 1981, I was on the last year at the university, when National Geographic published a book with the best images taken by their photographers. Along came a small Field Guide created by the staff photographers, which provided the basics on photography, techniques, equipment, and film. After reading it thoroughly many times, I knew that I would need to change to a professional camera, which I did a few months later, buying a Nikon F1.
On a future chapter will talk about other important milestone on my photography quest.
