I developed an early interest in photography. My parents bought me a Kodak 127 for my 10th birthday which was hardly any more sophisticated than a pinhole camera. I recall taking the first role of film, 12 exposures, and then inadvertently fogging it before it could be developed.
I went through a phase of commandeering the bathroom which had been part of a rental unit on our top floor as a dark room to develop and print photographs. My impatience and incompetence (foreshadowing the same qualities which ended my brief career as a research biochemist) produced indifferent results.
There was a shop in Blackheath called Butcher, Curnow which was half a pharmacy, or chemist as we call them in those days, and half a camera shop. On the left, behind a long mahogany counter, were stacked rows of bottles with coloured liquids. On the right, up two steps, was the photography counter. Each day, on the way home from school. I would gaze at the shop window drooling over the unaffordable Pentaxes. At lunchtime, with a similarly obsessed friend, I would visit the local library which subscribed to Amateur Photographer and marvel at the images produced by professionals.
For my 13th birthday, which occurred while we were spending the summer in Chicago, where my father was working, I received a Voigtlander Vitoret, a rangefinder camera which by father, an optics professional, had selected on the basis of its lens, which he assured me was the best in its class. But without an exposure meter, and in the blinding Illinois sun, almost all of my attempts, turned out to be woefully overexposed. I envied my father’s Konica, considerably superior and sporting an exposure meter. (When I inherited his belongings, I took it to a secondhand camera shop reluctant to part with such a treasure. The owner shook his head sadly when he saw it. Lovely camera, he said, but I can’t sell them. He pointed over my shoulder to a shelf where there were three identical models with a label underneath, saying simply ‘offers?’)
Five years later, I splurged most of my first term’s allowance at university on a Practika SLR. With minimal funds to buy film, my attempts of photography were minimal.
Two decades further on and with access to real money, I bought an expensive Canon. This was transferred to my second wife, who subsequently lost it.
I went through a decade of acquiring a succession of digital cameras, the last of which was stolen, along with my passport and other valuables, in Spain. Since then, like most people, I have managed with a mobile phone.
I still look in the windows of camera shops. Now that I can afford to buy any model I choose the allure has faded. I read the descriptions, note the prices then shake my head and walk on.
