Photographs you took over 30 years ago

[Lastblackdog]

I thought it might be a good idea to allow some of us older photographers to share photos we took back in the day on film.

I'll start with one I took of my "Old Man" fifty years ago. He was five years younger than I am now when I took this photo.

 

[griffljg]

Way back in December 1980 I bought my first SLR camera. - An Olympus OM2N. I was living and working in both South Africa and (briefly) in Zimbabwe. Even after I returned to South Africa from Zimbabwe in January 1982, I kept returning to Zimbabwe at least twice a year. The Zambezi Valley had become my "Happy Place" and I still had the rest of the country to explore. I used a mixture of slide and colour negative film. - A print remains a picture, while viewing a slide projected against a screen is like looking through a window. In 1981, it occurred to me that I was having a bit of difficulty remembering when I had taken photos and so I bought an Olympus Recordata Back 3 and started imprinting the date on the first photo which I took each day. Usually I switched off the data back after the first photo, but sometimes I didn't. - Most irritating!

Here are a couple of digitised slides of Victoria Falls which I took on 5 June 1986:

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[griffljg]

Zimbabwe Ruins (aka Great Zimbabwe)

The Central Enclosure

Taken in about 1984 / 1985. I forgot to use the Recordata Back on that visit.

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[ShipleyNW]

This is Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States

I was in high school in 1976 when Carter came to the San Diego Zoo on a campaign trip. As a budding photojournalist, I skipped school and headed down there early. Found a spot and camped out on the rope line. I probably waited 2 or 3 hours to get this shot.

I was shooting with a Konica Autoreflex T and probably a Hexanon zoom. Even though it was a sunny, San Diego day, I mounted up a Honeywell potato-masher flash. I was taking no chances. This shot was made from near-handshake range. I bet he flinched when I blew that strobe at him.

I carried this negative with me through several college color printing classes.



This March, I went down to Peoria Arizona, the shared spring-training home of the San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners. In 1994, the opening year of that facility, I spent a week or two down there covering the Mariners for a stupid little fanzine. That was pretty much the last gasp of my photojournalism career. 30 years ago this March.

 

[griffljg]

Drakensberg Rest Stop

While hiking in the Drakensberg Mountains in Natal Province in South Africa, we decided to take a rest stop and admire the view.

Taken sometime in the late 1980s.

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[Kuma5]

One of the portrait class assignments themed natural outdoor light from about '84'ish I recollect, Minolta X700 with Vivitar Series 1 70-200:

This was done about '90 of the soon to be Mrs. Kuma, Minolta X700 50/1.8:

 

[griffljg]

Rhodes' Grave

In the Matopo Hills in south-western Zimbabwe, which used to be called Rhodesia, is the grave of the English mining magnate and politician Cecil John Rhodes. In the background is the Shangani Memorial, which is a monument in remembrance of Major Allan Wilson and his men of the Shangani Patrol, who were massacred by the Matabele during the hunt to find King Lobengula during the First Matabele War in 1893.

I took this photo on 4th November 1989.

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[griffljg]

Reality Check

Ten years after the end of the Rhodesian Bush War, this sign was still there..... And for good reason!

Photo taken on 29 October 1989.

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[griffljg]

Loch Ness, with the ruins of Urquhart Castle on the right. - Taken on 18 July 1990 using Fujichrome 50 slide film. Hence the high saturation of the colours.




The piper at Urquhart Castle

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[By-tor]

My baby in Aviano, Italy summer of 1986. Alps in the background..

Ricoh XR-1 & a 50mm lens

 

[By-tor]

SR-71 taxing behind us after parking in the hardstand at RAF Mildenhall, England.

Ricoh XR-1 & a 50mm lens

 

[Cliff Hilbert]

My baby in Aviano, Italy summer of 1986. Alps in the background..

Ricoh XR-1 & a 50mm lens

View attachment 76997

For some reason that plane looks like it's tilting to the left just a little.

 

[Chris001]

Wildflecken Germany, 1986, AE1P FD 50mm 1.8

 

[By-tor]

Fuel load could be a little off between wings.

 

[3Rotor]

SR-71 taxing behind us after parking in the hardstand at RAF Mildenhall, England.

Ricoh XR-1 & a 50mm lens

That SR-71. Super cool!

 

[By-tor]

That SR-71. Super cool!

Very loud and neat to watch takeoff, more so at night...

 

[MakisM1]

Yosemite, September 16, 1983, scanned from film.

My first 'artistic' photo, shot with an Agfa box camera, Halkida, Greece, 1966. Scanned from paper.

 

[Lastblackdog]

Kawasaki taken in the early '90's in Portugal.

 

[Lastblackdog]

This is a colorised photo I took just over 50 years ago. The chap in the photo is Joeboy Ainscough. He is a labourer on an Overhead Cable Repair crew working for the Irish Electricity Supply company. As you can see, he is returning to the hut having secured water for the job but also for the tea - most important. I was an apprentice electrician working with the crew replacing the electricity supply to a row of houses in Dublin at that time.

 

[edmidlifecrisis]

1976 Miami Beach taken from the Goodyear Blimp (airship). They used to give public rides in the seventies if you were lucky and persistent enough to snag a reservation. The gondola only held I think 6 or so passengers. We managed.

You can see the old, run-down Miami Beach before it was gentrified into South Beach here. And the shadow of the airship. Taken most likely with a Nikkormat and a Nikkor 50mm f2 lens on Ektachrome. The slides didn't hold up well and lots of color shift. I did some corrections as best I could in LRC a few years ago. And I didn't bother straightening the horizon since it cut too much out.

Miami Beach as seen from the Goodyear Blimp (Airship) in 1976, with ship shadow in picture by Ed Spenser, on Flickr