Photographica

I became interested in photography in the early 1970s, shooting pictures with my Dad’s Kodak Retina IIc and dropping the film off at the corner drugstore for developing. Home darkrooms were a popular hobby among kids in those days and a few of my friends were developing and printing their own black and white film at home in makeshift darkrooms, so I set one up in my parent’s basement laundry room. All of the paraphernalia and chemicals bothered my mother to no end.

I put photography aside for many years to raise a family, getting bit by the bug again in the mid 1990s. I bought a Nikon N90s and built my dream darkroom in an extra stall in my garage. A divorce forced photography to the back burner again around 2000.

I moved to California in late 2010 and one night, while browsing eBay, just for fun, I started looking at old film cameras. I could not believe how inexpensive they had become. Just for kicks, I bought a Nikon FE2 for I think $60. That FE2 got me back into film photography. Over the past 12 years, I’ve been fortunate to have been able to afford, acquire, use and mostly sell for a profit, lots of legendary film cameras. These were the cameras I drooled over as a kid, while flipping through the pages of Modern Photography magazine. I never could have imagined that someday I would own the cameras I lusted after then.

Over the years, I have photographed many of the cameras and other photo gear I have owned. I’ve used the photos on this blog, on social media or some I’ve just shot for fun. A few are hanging in my den at home. Some of these I shot with whatever iPhone I had at the time. The others were taken with either the Nikon F2 or FM2n and the fabulous 55mm f/2.8 Micro-Nikkor on Kodak T-Max 400 or the original Fuji Acros. These are some of my favorites.