My first eighty-five years of picture-taking hasn’t produced much knowledge of any value here. I’m hoping the next 85 years will be different. My first picture was in 1925 with a Brownie Box Camera. It was of a dead Robin I found in Aunt Minnie’s yard.  I upgraded to a Leica while in Munich during the summer of 1937. I should have bought two. They were $65 apiece back then. One of my very first pictures was of Adolph (himself) Hitler. He came down to Munich nearly every weekend and always made a big splash riding around in an open touring sedan with Goebels, Goering, Hess, Himmler and whoever else he decided to bring down with him. My roommate at the Studentenheim in Munich was a young architect from California. He had an enlarger, and we had fun printing pictures of everybody and everything including Paul Kelly, the Yale end who was spending the summer in Munich with us just after winning the Heisman Trophy (1936). I left the camera at home during World War II. But, I took it with me when I got called back into the Marine Corps and sent to Korea. While I was in Korea, the great Leica photographer, David Douglas Duncan opened eyebrows at Life Magazine by sending them pictures with sharpness and clarity far beyond anything they had ever seen before. Then the word leaked out, that Duncan had managed to get Nikon to build him a special lens with a screw mount so it would fit on a Leica. When I heard that, I ordered one of those lenses on my very next trip back to Japan. It took some doing to get one. That was the best little camera I ever had. I wish I still had it in my pocket. Suddenly, the real world caught up with me and I dropped out of photography for nearly half a century --- until the full-frame Nikon D3 came along. Now, the plot really begins to thicken. The next 85 years is really going to be something. (To be continued.)

Member Since: 2009

Photographing Since: 1925

Location: Virginia Beach

Camera: Nikon D3

Photography Interests: People, Animals, Natural Light.