How I started - part two:
Early Learning on the Isle of Wight
The friend of the family mentioned previously – Jim – was a professional Photography Person. My Mum knew him because they both worked at the local branch of Boots. Jim lived on the Isle of Wight, just a ferry-trip away. One day he invited me over to the island for the weekend to have some fun with cameras.
When we arrived, I was introduced to his mum – an elderly-looking woman dressed all in black. (“Elderly-looking” to a 10-year-old means, of course, over forty?) She looked rather severe but she welcomed me nonetheless. She made us some dinner - a plate of fried eggs with tinned mushrooms and some crispy potato sticks from a large bag. I was delighted.
Jim and I spent the weekend taking pictures, talking about pictures, walking through the local countryside and talking about birds, the light, landscape and photography. He showed me the controls on my new camera, the Halina Viceroy.
He explained the two lenses, the shutter, the film advance and two little selection knobs. One was labelled “I” and “B”, t’other “8”, “11” and “16”. He showed what they were for and the relationship between them.
As I turned the “8;11;16” knob I could see the hole behind the lens changing size. As Jim said "Aperture is F8, F11 or F16".
He then pointed out that the “I;B” selection meant “Instantaneous” and “Brief”. In fact, “I” gave me a shutter speed of 25th/second, but the “B” selection...?!?
I held the camera steady on a nearby gatepost, selected “B” and asked Jim to dance about in front of the camera. I pulled down the shutter lever and held it for a few seconds. When we developed the picture there was the scenery in (reasonable) focus and a wildly, out-of-focus, ghostly creation, dancing in the sunlight!
In the evenings we played Cluedo. The whole weekend was an innocent delight and helped give me a fresh view on photography.
I returned home, gleeful and ready to take pictures of ... whatever came my way!
Here are a sister and brother, posing tastefully in the yard of our back garden.
Note - I don't have many of my early photographs ready-to-hand. I have recently found lots of old negatives in my Mum's old place and am currently working through them to see if there are any delights there.
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