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Our fathers and grandfathers never dreamed of the world we see today. Nowhere is this more evident than in the arena of communications. Moving pictures and radio gave way to televisions and the video camera. The computer and the Internet lets you talk and see a person at the same time. Our grand children and their children will see new inventions we don’t even dream of now. But nothing will take the place of the plain old still camera and the photograph that had frozen a particular moment in time for eternity. Think of the picture of Abraham Lincoln standing on the battlefield with his generals. It was a critical brief period in American history where the future of this nation could have gone either way. We may still share this with those alive that day. We can all think of still pictures that were and still are an intricate portion of our lives. The photo albums. The pictures on the mantel. The portraits on the walls. We were younger, healthier then. We can look at the photos and remember. You can’t put a video or a tape recording on the wall. A still photo fits nicely, and belongs there. The old box Kodak box camera my mother used kept the records of the family. My uncle in his sailor suit on his way to the Bay of Naples during World War II. My grandfather, grandmother and the family taking a Sunday stroll on the farm. My father was a plumber and often brought home items his customer-friends were throwing away. Once he brought home some ancient photo equipment and my young curiosity seized it. There were chemicals from a company called The Rochester Chemical Company. A subtitle had the name Eastman in it. There were two darkroom lights, small table lamps enclosed in a brown metal shell with a door to open with a red glass to dim it. One was electric. The other, kerosene. There was an enlarger for use in daylight. The folding cardboard case had a place at the top for the negative, a lens below it and a holder at the bottom for photographic paper. It worked. My curiosity had me remove the cork from a bottle labeled ascetic acid. I took a whiff and thought something had blown the back of my head off. I treated chemicals carefully after that. In my attic bedroom at night with blankets over the windows if there was moonlight, I had my three trays of developer, stop bath and acid fixer. A small bucket of water held the negatives or prints until I could take them downstairs later to the bathroom sink. In the dim light, I held each end of the roll of film and seesawed it through one tray after the other. It was exciting to see the dark image form on the pale film. Graduating to a Kodak Duaflex and a real electric Federal enlarger, I made my first dollar selling pictures of my fellow seniors receive their diplomas at graduation. A dollar covered the 8 by 10 photo and postage. My first money was earned on vacation from college when I took a picture of a dead taxi driver we discovered in the roadside ditch leading to our farm. The local daily paid me the awesome sum of $3. The year I worked at the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot and roomed with my friend Neal Clark he had won the state press association award for best sport photo of the year. His photo was a closeup of the catcher, his mask removed to catch a ball and stop the basestealer. The mitt was in front of the lower part of his face, but not high enough for the ball sailing above it and frozen inches from the catcher’s forehead. The next picture was the man unconscious beside homeplate. Neal introduced me to the Speed and Crown Graphics cameras with their 4 by 5 negatives. It seemed to take forever for me to understand just how a focal plane worked. My friend finally got it into my head by having me think of a window shade with a slit in it quickly exposing the view. The 4 by 5 became almost an extension of me and I picked up a few prizes myself. One was a deputy wounded during a manhunt for a murderer. The publisher criticized the picture I had of the posse going into the woods. He hated photos with the backs of heads. “You wanted me to get between the armed posse and the killer hiding in the woods?” I asked. “No thanks.” Shooting sports was exciting and challenging. At basketball games, I squatted and put the camera on my foot to pivot it with my heel. The low angle made the players look ten feet in the air. Another favorite shot was of a first base play where the ball was inches from the baseman’s mitt and the runner’s foot inches from the bag. There were pictures of big and little people. Presidents and sports stars. Grocery deliver man and an 80-year-old plumber still working. There were those personal pictures that are locked in memory even more than the incidents themselves. My teenage fiancée in blue jeans walking on a railroad track on the farm. My first daughter fresh out of the delivery room and in a nurse’s arms. My mother and father smiling, young and happy together. Most of the photos have been lost in moving. I still remember them. And the walls of my office in the backroom of our home are crowded with photos of friends, family and events. There’s one I took of candidate Don Sundquist with Santa Claus during his campaign. “With Santa Claus on my side, Pete,” he said, “how can I lose?” Zach Wamp, Ralph Wilson, Jacques Zinman, Bill Bennett, Fred Thompson and Virginia at Wally's Restaurant, children and grandchildren. No one will ever come up with something better than the old still picture and the memories it carries. There is nothing that can take the place of a photograph.
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