Life through a Lens

Life through a lens

On my 14th birthday, my mother gave me a Browning camera with two rolls of film. It was a square cardboard box with a lens. Great gift as I now looked at life through the small lens of the camera. Loved it and once I had the film developed, I soon realised I needed a lot more practice. It was as if another world had opened up and capturing that moment in time gave me power and started my creative skills. Butterflies never seemed to settle long enough, but when they did it was magic. Needless to say, my mother did get wary of all the films I wanted to develop. In these early days of photography, I maybe had one good photo from a roll of 30.

Back at boarding school I joined the photographic society and learned to develop my own photos. Even in the early 1960s, we did some amazing prints from what would have been a bad photo. Thankfully we now have Adobe Photoshop to change the original image completely.

By now I had moved on to the Brownie 127. A point-and-shoot camera with a viewfinder, so modern and compact.

Photos did tell some of the story but there was always more I wanted to tell so I moved on to The Printing Society and added articles to the images. I would send the negative to a printing press and they would make a plate out of it and I would add the plate to the type, yep, every letter at a time and then ink that and print the whole article, all black and white. I eventually ran the school printing press and with the help of the people at the local printing press, I did three years of producing the school yearly magazine.

Must have done something right because The Friend newspaper, our town newspaper offered me a job, as a junior editor to start with.

Father Beckett and Mr Harcourt-Vernon, teachers at my school, suggested I not accept, as my view on South Africa, at that time was so radically different to the Afrikaner and the Nationalist government, I would get into trouble. He was my English teacher and had read my school work and also stopped me from printing articles I had written for the school newspaper. 

Wise words but the Afrikaner Nationalist did find me in the end and made life difficult, but that is another story. Harcourt-Vernon was also deported back to England a few years after I left school.

This is one of those times when the pen is mightier than the sword. Someone said to me, do not hurt someone if you do not have to, especially if they are the ones you love. We will leave the pen to rest.

Why the camera angle, well, it really was a walk down memory lane and also showing how far technology has evolved over the last 60 years. These photo taken of Jenson has been downloaded 54,000 times. My camera is now a Canon 850D and my go-to lens is an 18-135mm lens. The reflection/evening image was taken by Susan on her iPhone. 

The last few days to Christmas and I am determined to slow the pace down and enjoy the expectation of a good Christmas Day. Susan has taken leave from Thursday and Robert is expected to come down around the same time. Full house and we will be celebrating every day until the 2nd January 2024. 2024 does sound strange, even to type 2024. Life goes on, too rapidly for my liking.

Hello Tanzanian Smiths. They are going to climb Kilimanjaro, one of Africa’s highest mountains. You heard it here first. Well not really climb the mountain, just walk around the top. Word has it that they will be going up in a helicopter and have a wander around on Christmas Day. Those Tanzanian Smiths really know how to live. We are hoping to see the great adventurer in the coming few months and can’t wait. 

That brings me around to what is happening next year. Well, it is going to be a year of travel, some locally and some further afield. Denmark, Italy, The Cotswolds, Nottingham and maybe Scotland and if Michael has anything to do with the planning, I would imagine some other intriguing cultures. 

Happy Christmas and I hope the New Year brings you love and happiness.