Your biggest influence in photography (especially CMC)

[Mike Gammill]

<p>I've often thought about starting a thread on this topic and finally located the picture I wanted to use. For me, the question: who was your biggest influence in photography (especially the use of CMC gear) was my dad. He used to let me hang out in the darkroom with him and by the time I was 10 years old I was printing. When I was 11 he allowed me to use his Voitlander Vitessa L to photograph a parade. At that time he had five cameras (not many by our standards today): A Mamiya C33, Mamiya Sekor 1000 TL with 50mm f1.4, Voitlander Vitess L, and a Burke & James view camera. While I briefly toyed with 127 film and Instamatics, I eventually moved into 35mm and 120 and never looked back.<br>

A couple of photos here in memory of my dad, who got me interested in photography and encouraged me.<br>

Anyone here have a story to tell (with pictures if you have them)?<br>

Two images of my dad: one taken with his Voigtlander and the other taken with my lowly Sears Cubex 127.</p><div></div>

[Mike Gammill]

<p>Likely my dad prefocused the Voitlander for me as at that time I hadn't gotten the knack of rangefinder focusing. Also he probably set the exposure for me. But he let me take the picture. <br>

Next images was from the primitive Sears Cubex 127. With its single speed shutter (around 1/30 I would guess) it was difficult for me to hold steady. The film was most likely Ansco All Weather Pan (or whatever Ansco sold in 127 during the late 1960's. My dad once gave me a box of 25 rolls of this film (probably from Freestyle) to further my picture taking adventures.</p><div></div>

[SCL]

<p>For me it was my high school biology teacher, who also ran the darkroom for the newspaper and unofficially served as head of the photography club. Although I had been actively interested in photography for several years, I had never developed or printed my own film. His enthusiasm and guidance got me started on a journey which continues well beyond fifty years later. He encouraged me to become a school newspaper photographer and to experiment with photography in the science labs. He also had the first SLR I ever saw, an EXA, and I knew that someday I wanted something like that.</p>

[andrew_brown7]

<p>My Mum and step-father used to take wonderful pictures, all black and white, from the late Forties up to quite recently and I have always tried to keep them in mind, from my first Brownie Box to today with two Nex cameras and a cupboard full of Nikon Fs'!<br>

There is something about those creamy slightly soft photos that they produced that I cannot re-find today, even though I do my own developing and printing. It is now about 60 years of looking and I hope there's a few more yet.<br>

<br />Andy.</p>

[Andy Collins]

<p>My greatest influence was, without a doubt, my dad and his Kodak Retinette 1A. All of our childhood photos were captured with that camera and watching my dad use that camera was what made me want to get a camera and follow suit. My mom also strongly encouraged me to take pictures (and to do creative or artistic things in general), and even when I began to pursue photography as an adult, she gave me the first several books that began my photo library.</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>My Dad was a painter, and only rarely took pictures with his Kodak Jiffy Six-20 (one below), and even more rarely did he use photographs to paint from, rather than en plein air or sketches.</p>

<p>By default, I became the one to take pictures with that camera on trips. I did do a Boy Scout Merit Badge in photography, so I guess I was my own mentor. I was developing 620 ortho film by red safelight in the family kitchen and then making prints on a contact printer.</p>

<p>My training in archaeology led me to take a more serious interest in photography and to acquire the then sparkling new Heiland Pentax H2, on which I have earlier posted. The PC-Nikkor led me to Nikon and being able to use that PC lens on digital (with an adapter) led me to Canon EOS.</p><div></div>

[chuck_foreman1]

Like most of us.. my Dad. He really used his camera sparingly typically shot Kodachrome and it came

out on Birthdays and Christmas. He had a German made Kodak Sears 35mm probably Tower 51 IIoca (

can't find it in that house anymore) He also had used a Kodak Brownie Six-20 as a budget solution after

college. He told me his dream was a Speed Graphic and in the school Camera Club ( in the 1940s )

they shared a Graflex 4x5 that belonged to the school. He told me recently his first camera was some

"German" camera, but due to the war he could not get the right film and he "pretended" to shoot;

practicing setting aperture and shutters. He thinks he sold it at some point. And later a fatherly uncle

gave him a 35mm ( likely an Agfa, not sure memory not good) which he didn't like because the quality of

the 35mm film was relatively poor and the enlargement index bad. He took a lot of us kids etc but this

slacked off until after switching teaching jobs he volunteered to teach photography.. I came in on the tail

end of this as I was just turning 20 and he taught me too (1980) with access to the darkroom and

enlarging etc. Somewhere I have a picture outside with one of my early classics a Koadk 116 I bought

(1988) and him with his Gossen Pilot lightmeter helping me set up the exposure. While I know the

picture exists.... the effort to find it is just too much. There's also a picture of my Dad with my Koni

Omega. I came home in whirlwind to marry in 1992 and assigned him as photographer and handed him

the huge Koni.

[John Seaman]

<p>The urge to get into classic manual photography was more caused by a deprivation of any kind of quality camera during my formative years. Cameras were something of a luxury item in the 1950's and I vaguely remember having a box camera which was typically used to do twelve pictures over a two week holiday. My father must have developed an enthusiasm for photography at some point because I remember him ordering a horrible plastic thing, with a wire frame viewfinder, out of a newspaper. He took my elder sister to a local park to photograph her with it. We still have the picture somewhere.<br /><br />Later we bought a Brownie Cresta 3, a plastic box 120 camera which actually took rather nice pictures. I remember it in its yellow Kodak box, and I still have the camera. One day I must hunt out some of the pictures I took with it.<br /><br />After this, I eventually bought a Cosmic 35 Russian camera which came with a roll of Russian slide film. A revelation to have focussing, adjustable speeds and aperture, and 36 exposures on a roll. Finally, a Zorki 4K, what luxury, a rangefinder! This was in the era when USSR goods could be had at low prices - "A Lot of *Car Watch Camera or whatever* for a Little Money".<br /><br />With increased affluence, and eventually the bottom falling out of the film market with the digital revoluston, it became possible to own and use equipment about which I could once only dream.</p>

[tony_lockerbie]

<p>A real theme here, but undoubtedly my Dad as well. He started with a Agfa Billy Record and used this in the early years of our family, but the camera I remember most was his Diax, a camera that was very expensive back then, especially as he was not a wealthy man.<br>

While I never used his Diax, he did let me use his Pentax Spotmatic in my early teens, and that really started the ball rolling.<br>

Like John, my collecting is also about using all those wonderful cameras that we just couldn't afford back in the day.</p>

[rick_drawbridge]

<p>While I guess my father, a keen amateur photographer, undoubtedly steered me into school camera clubs and cultivated my interest, it wasn't until some years later that I found a sense of direction and inspiration. I was working as a junior photographer in a rather boring environment, with a fairly hum-drum assortment of product and portrait assignments, when an art-director friend showed me a copy of the latest Pentax calender, the work of a South African photographer named Sam Haskins. The Pentax calenders went on to become iconic, while Sam Haskins became legendary in the field of creative fashion and art photography. Upon poring over the calender I knew that <em>this</em> was where I wanted to go; I unashamedly used one of the (now famous) images from the calender as a starting point to create my own version. My friend was impressed, and introduced me to the editor of one of the more stylish magazines, and within twelve months I was successfully self-employed as fashion and product photographer. Due to Forum policy I can't reproduce the Haskins image here, but here's a link to the shot in question, plus a whole lot more of his great images:<br /> <br />www.pinterest.com/pin/543739354981035006/<br /> <br /> And here's my somewhat inferior attempt, set in a rather cheesy frame for an exhibition held about ten years ago. I remember that the camera was a Mamiya C33 TLR using my favourite 180mm lens, and the film was probably Kodak Vericolor II. I guess I have quite a lot to thank Sam Haskins for, and I remain a devoted fan.</p><div></div>

[Rick Helmke]

<p>This is one place where my dad probably was not a primary influence though he was always always supportive. I think it was a guy named Bill White who as a young man showed a bunch of 7th graders what really happens when you put exposed photo paper into a tray of developer. It's been downhill ever since. I ran into Bill a few weeks ago when I went to my first meeting of a local photography club. He's older and retired but he's still Bill.</p>

<p>Rick H.</p>

[subbarayan_prasanna]

<p>In my college days <strong>my brother</strong> gave me this Fed 2 that he brought from Ukraine. My class mate David <strong>Maltus</strong> got me involved in the student dark room club, where I learned to develop, print, enlarge etc. My focus mostly developed into architecture and urban design items. I still did not know much about cameras, as such, though I had learned by myself to develop color slides in my apartment.<br>

More recently, I could and should name people like Miles <strong>Upton</strong> [Exaktaphile- his manual taught me how to repair an Exakta], similarly Isaac <strong>Maizenberg</strong> on FSU cameras, Glenn <strong>Middleton</strong>, Steve <strong>Shepherd</strong> and Rick <strong>Oleson</strong> on repair tips. From this very forum <strong>JDM</strong> on various cameras and their evolution, Rick <strong>Drawbridge</strong> on still life visual characeristics and how to apply them on the urban scene [a very unique approach, indeed!] and several other members. Thanks everyone! My your tribe increase! sp.</p>

[chansonbleu]

<p>Growing up my family had no interest in photography. There would be a cheap camera around, but it got little use. Perhaps the occasional birthday or holiday snaps.</p>

<p>In 1979 my wife was pregnant with our daughter and I wanted to take some images at her birth. There was an exchange engineer from England named Keith Fulford who we had become close friends with that was an avid photographer. I asked him how to go about getting images in the hospital, and he kindly loaned me his OM1 and 50mm Zuiko. NO flash was allowed, so Keith set me up with some fast film (400 asa) and set the aperture and shutter speed to what he guessed would be correct. Indeed he got it right.</p>

<p>During the excitement of the moment I only took four or five images. Decided to shoot the rest of the roll before taking it in for processing. Using the instructions Keith had given me on the use of the OM I shot some images around the house.</p>

<p>I was so taken by the images of my newborn daughter and what other images I'd taken, I had to get a camera of my own. Keith Fulford started my love of photography and manual cameras. My GAS is my own doing.</p>

[kris-bochenek]

<p>I don't have father who shot with any classic cameras to inspire me to do the same- most of you are lucky in that sense. My trip into the darkside started almost as soon as my trip to the cleaner part of photography. In 2007 I got a Smena 8m camera and took my first images on film, first referring to time when I knew what I was doing, and I was blow away with color saturation and sharpness from a camera and a lens that was not, what I considered, a real camera. I later purchased my first real film camera, Yashica 635 and I was a believer ever since. Here is the very first image taken with Yashica 635. It was shot on Kodak TriX and commercially developed by.... I don't know who.</p><div></div>

[dan_fromm2]

<p>The person who had the largest effect on my still photography was A. A. Blaker, who did it with his book Field Photography. That book taught me more about photographic technique than any other.</p>

<p>My father's example -- he was sent to Japan in 1954 (or was it '3?) for a three month stay, took a B&H 8 mm camera and a pile of kodachrome with him, edited the film he shot into the best home movie I've ever seen -- motivated me to try shooting movies.</p>

<p>No person influenced me to take up still photography. When I went to Germany in 1969 I had a Yashica S8 camera and the idea of shooting film to share with friends when I returned home. Not a good idea, the Yashica had a sharp but slow lens. With K40 (ASA, now ISO, 25 with the daylight filter in) it was usable only at high noon. So to share and with an eye to eventually taking pictures of fishes in aquariums I went to a 35 mm SLR and shot, because of the darkness, mainly HS Ektachrome.</p>

<p>When I took up still photography most of the 35 mm still SLRs on the market were fully manual. Some, not all, low end leaf shutter range- and viewfinder cameras had auto exposure and so did the Konica Autoreflex-T. Most, not all of the 35mm SLRs had on-board meters. Autofocus was a fantasy. Metering options were a fantasy. Power thumbs were rare and most were for very expensive cameras. Autoflash, not to mention TTL autoflash, didn't exist. We had to learn how to control our cameras etc., the crutches that posters here seem to take for granted didn't exist.</p>

<p>When I took up film I shot Super 8 -- bigger frame than 8/8, slightly easier loading -- and the typical S8 camera had autoexposure and power zoom. I ended up with a couple of Beaulieu cine cameras that could be run fully manual.</p>

[Brad Cloven]

<p>Some random guy in a parking lot in Fargo, ND was collapsing and loading a medium format folder into the trunk of his car.</p>

<p>"What's that?" I say.</p>

<p>"A medium format fold-out camera," he replied.</p>

<p>Having a penchant for film, and a 35mm Nikon and a few lenses, I was looking for a way to improve my images. He talked me into getting a folder from Jurgen Kreckel, which turned out to be a 1952 Agfa Billy Record II, which took excellent shots on a trip to Yosemite.</p>

<p>I've been getting other medium format gear and older cameras ever since. So, was it some random guy in a parking lot on the wind-swept plains, or Jurgen who sold me a really good shooter?</p>

<p>:-)</p>

<p> </p>

[Troll]

<p>Pop and Modern Photography, Graphic and Graflex Photography, The Leica Manual. I'm not sure that they didn't do more harm than good.</p>

[dave_s]

<p>>>Some random guy in a parking lot in Fargo, ND was collapsing and loading a medium format folder into the trunk of his car.</p>

<p>I had to read that sentence twice to get the correct meaning (on the 'eats, shoots, and leaves' principle).</p>

<p>+1 what Mr Fromm said. A A Blaker: Field and Nature Photography, published by W H Freeman (the <em>Scientific American</em> publisher) in the late 1970s. Taught me much more than just field and nature photography.</p>

[Mike Gammill]

<p>Great responses, everyone. My oldest son (age 22) has really taken a liking to CMC and does most of his photography with a Minolta SRT 201 and sometimes a Konica Auto S2. He shoots a lot of black & white and we work together in our home darkroom. I hope my CMC influence lasts. My youngest son (18) is more of the "snap it with the iPhone" type, but he still appreciates good CMC photos.</p>

[Rob_the_waste]

<p>With respect to CMC's, my father too. His camera was a Diax L1 which I still have as he passed it down to me when I first met the significant other. I imagine I'll still have it left when she cleans me out...<br>

The other influence I have is occasionally on this forum. John Golden's fantastic long exposure shots on large format turned me onto those waterfall shots. Although I don't have a large format camera, I do have a number of medium format cameras that do well.</p>

[Alex_Es]

<p>HCB and his Leicas. Around 1984 I started using vintage Leica and Canon rangefinders. I did not have an out of the box new rangefinder until 1999.</p>

[Argenticien]

<p>My mother never explicitly stated a policy that I should be interested in photography, but always seemed to be working in that vein. She gave me an Instamatic when I was six years old, as we were about to undertake moving from Pennsylvania to Florida. I believe my first photo (possibly still in my parents' house) is of an orange Allied moving van. Later I was given a succession of 110 cameras and 35 mm point-and-shoots, then was loaned her AE-1 for a high school photography class. In high school I worked on the school newspaper and slightly the yearbook, writing and editing (not photographing) but was friends with the photographers. Philip taught me the word "Hasselblad" at about age 16, and spent his teenage years lusting for one (while shooting 35 mm for the newspaper) when every other boy wanted a fast car. Emily toted a Nikon of some kind and was the first photographer I knew with serious talent. She and I have coincidentally ended up in the same city (not where our high school was) and remain friends 25 years later. I work hard to get even one "keeper" picture per roll; she continues to stun me by getting better pictures from her casual snaps and iPhone shots than I get from my carefully considered and framed efforts.<br>

<em>--Dave</em></p>

[katsone]

<p>I honestly have to say that the photography in National Geographic Magazine influenced me to have an interest in photography at around the age of 10 or 12 years old. I wanted to photo journalize all my meek adventures and local travel! I had a couple of inadequate Instamatics that just disappointed me terribly, then in High School my Dad loaned me his Kodak Retina 1a for a photography class. My teacher was patient and encouraging and my love for photography just grew. I've moved up the modest digital lines to my recent Canon 70D, and yet recently purchased a mint condition Retina 1b. I'm happy to revisit the basis of my photography lessons and playing with my "new" Retina has been a blast from the past.</p>