M e t h o d s   &   M a d n e s s

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I have a long history with photography, but it has never been my profession or source of income. My first camera, as a child, was Kodak Box Brownie which I still have. My first venture into cameras with actual settings was a ?????????????. Images from those earlier cameras, all black & white, are lost to time. That's unfortunate, I'd like to look at them. At some stage, I moved into the 35mm format, and my last personal film based camera was a Minolta SLR 35mm which I must have bought in Singapore in the 1970's. I've forgotten any cameras in between.

Driven by what impetus I don't know, I decided to use Ektachrome on 35mm cameras and thus I collected, starting in the early 1970's, and kept, a huge number of 35mm slides. I know these numbered in the thousands, because I kept them in carousels which held 120 each, and I had about 30 of them, stacked neatly in a large bookcase!

For years, I processed my own black & white film, in a laundry which I managed to light-seal fairly effectively. I didn't want to pay for a decent enlarger, so I built my own from parts. Moving on to colour and Ektachrome, I even processed those positives at home using rather expensive kits from Kodak, but in the end I gave that up as too much trouble, and thereafter relied on professionals to do that job.

I also can't remember exactly when my photography switched from film to digital, but I can recall waiting until decent resolutions were available in consumer cameras. The earliest ones were pretty poor in that regards.