I got an early start in photography, perhaps not surprising given that my dad was a former pro photo

I got an early start in photography, perhaps not surprising given that my dad was a former pro photographer and my mom was a model. So I was pretty much surrounded by cameras as a kid. The first photos I can remember taking were on a New York vacation at age nine, when a shopkeeper gave me a cheap box camera that some tourist had abandoned. Using a more serious but archaic camera borrowed from my dad, I sold my first photo… of a basketball game… to the high school paper in December 1970. I was 15. A week later, I was on the staff of the high school paper. A year after that I’d been published in every local paper and all three major Chicago papers. As soon as I’d made enough from photo sales, I bought my first serious camera; a Nikkormat FTn, in spring 1971.The camera was slightly used, perhaps six months old, purchased from a guy who had bought it at Altman’s on Wabash Street in downtown Chicago. He needed cash, so I got a pretty good deal. The Nikkormat was Nikon’s serious amateur/semi-pro body of the time. It was considerably less expensive than the then top of the line Nikon FTn and had fewer features. The finder and ground glass weren’t interchangeable, the back wasn’t removable. The Nikkormat did have some innovations of its own, including consolidation of the shutter speeds and ASA (ISO) settings on a ring behind the lens mount. This took a little getting used to, and at first there was a tendency to knock the shutter speed tab with a finger. A few days of practice, and the fingers learned to stay out of the way of the tab. The advantage was that this system did away with the bulky and top-heavy finder on the Nikon FTn. The Nikkormat was very slightly larger than the base Nikon F, but for the day it was relatively compact for a TTL-metered camera body.Mine had a basic 50mm f/2.0 normal lens, and at first that’s all I could afford. Today indexing the prong (or “rabbit ears”) on the aperture ring with the pin on the body feels a awkward, but in practice I quickly got good at it and could change and index lenses without looking (the prong indexed the maximum aperture of the lens with the meter).My school paper gig soon grew. The faculty editor was promoted to handle all publicity for the school district, and she took me and one other photographer with her. The other person handled theatre, I got almost everything else. Sports were a weekly routine; football in the fall, basketball in winter, baseball in spring, with track, cross country, swimming, and a few other things mixed in. There were portraits of new teachers or students who had just won recognition, and many other things that I barely remember all these years later. The school bought my film in 100 foot rolls and my paper in 250-sheet or 500-sheet boxes, and they paid me. I was given assignments, allowed to pick the best photo for each assignment, and then delivered nine prints of each image on Monday by 9:00 am. On a typical Monday I’d drop about 45 prints on the editors desk, and they’d run in all the local papers each Thursday. I had a side gig going, at halftime of sports events I learned to take photos of the cheerleaders and pom-pon girls and then bring proof sheets to the cafeteria. I did a booming business selling prints to pretty girls. As a junior I learned the power of the camera when the homecoming queen asked me to photograph her. She drove us to a local park in her 1967 Chevelle, with lots of folks waving at her on the way. The camera got me close enough to the most popular and one of the prettiest girls in school, she was a year older than me, and I learned that contrary so the general perception that she was unapproachable she turned out to be a really sweet and nice person.I shot my first model composites with that camera, too. First Rosanne, one of the pom-pon girls, with her stage mom writing the checks. With that first composite in hand she signed exclusive with one of the Michigan Avenue agencies and graced the pages of local publications in Marshall Field’s ads for the next few years. Her success brought a flood of other paying would-be models, most of them without her charisma or looks or her success.By that time my Nikkormat was starting to show the signs of use. By the time I graduated, every edge and every corner was brassy. I’d run something like 350,000 frames of film through the camera by then, and it looked like one of those well worn war correspondent cameras. Character, for sure. Everything still worked. I’d had the meter fixed once after a hard fall which broke and bent the skylight filter. I hacksawed the filter off the lens and gently tapped the small dent in the leading edge of the lens back to almost round with a piece of soft wood and a hammer, and it still threaded filters. I later sold the camera, and the 135mm and 28mm lenses I’d acquired by then, for not a whole lot less than I’d paid when everything was shiny and new. By then… about 1974… I’d saved enough to buy a brand new Nikon F2. But that’s another story.That Nikkormat served me well, it became an extension of my hands and eyes for those three years and was remarkably reliable. Years later I picked up another one, still clean and un-abused and shown in the photo above, on a whim for a very good price. I think that one came from a shop in New York City, and I still have it as a reminder of the original old workhorse. The old mercury batteries aren’t readily available anymore so if I shot it, which I never have, it would likely be with a handheld meter. This one is more of a reminder though, not a user. -- source link

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