High school years part II- Konica

Once again abroad the "way back" machine en route to the 1974-75 school year. I was a senior and was making extensive use of the new Konica Auto S2 that I bought from family camera store stock. My dad kept the bulk loader supplied with Tri-X so film was never a problem. I've included some of my first work with this camera so focus/dof, etc may not be great. But that shutter priority autoexposure did a good job of nailing the correct exposure. I hadn't gotten the knack of loading stainless steel reels yet so I was still using an ancient plastic reel Ansco tank. And of course the soup was D-76.

The science classroom

Must have been fairly early in the school year as a mole problem (chemistry) was on the board. We also used this room for physics.

same room looking up front

 

We thought we were big time as we were allowed calculators our senior year for physics. In chemistry the previous year we used slide rules.

 

Getting ready for a bonfire before the game

 

hanging out until pep rally time

 

Senior math class- today it would just be called pre-calculus

 

The overhead fluorescent lamps gave a generous amount of light for most situations. I tried to keep the shutter at 1/125 second as much as I could, although that left dof shallow.

All too soon graduation approached. Here are a couple of my friends at a senior party.

used flash I think. Probably a Sunpak 201

Oops. Read the board more carefully in second image. The chemistry class was doing molecular formulas. This would probably be late fall.

As with virtually all the film I shot in that day, I used D-76 diluted 1:1. We kept a second jug of D-76 stock that was reused a number of times for processing sheet film.

I remember those pants.

I bought a suit that came with one of those as a 2nd pant, which I could never bring myself to wear.

Nice pictures for a high school level of (in)experience, Mike. I was not taking anything that good at that age. I am a bit younger so only remember the tail end of the 1970s, and only as a little kid, but even so I also partook of the sartorial mischief of that decade. I remember learning as a toddler the first rule of dressing oneself is "don't wear stripes and plaid." I suspect that rule is not top of mind these days as we are no longer wearing acres of plaid. Or maybe I should say hectares. I note the display introducing unwitting Americans to the metric system! That clearly did not take hold here.

 

I'm also noticing that your high school was somewhat integrated at that time. Was that a big deal and controversial at the time, in Mississippi? Do you know if that is still so, or was perhaps somewhere around your tenure the high-water mark for that? (That is, between the original segregation 1.0 and today's segregation 2.0, being the result of the Big Sort?) I know things are moving backward toward the bad old ways in a lot of places today, including where I am.

--Dave

It varied with the class, Argenticien. I took Physics (only one section) and Senior Math. I was in the top English class, but about average in everything else. We were fully integrated (as of winter of 1970) but didn't have any major problems during those years. The guy with the big hair near the front in image two still lives here in town and I see him from time to time.

Yeah, I needed more experience. Until my junior and senior year I mainly took photos of family and friends.

Thanks.