President's Day

Today had not started out as one would hope - I learned of the passing of an old friend of mine.  I met her through a combination of mutual acquaintances and photography - she was, back then, a model and actress.  We had a great time with the photography.  Then she disappeared, for 27 years.  I had never gotten some of the photos to her before she went wherever it was she had gone.  Well, I keep all my photography and had the negatives of her filed away, then did the job of scanning many of my negatives and prints to convert to digital format.  The digital revolution happened while she was gone.  As did the rise of computer internet websites, which is how she found me.  She called me and told me she had lost all her photos and wondered if I still had some.  She had gotten married 5 years earlier and wanted me to meet her husband and see me again.  She lived around 140 miles away, so one day I drove up the coast from LA to Solvang, then surprised her with a call and told her I was around 10 miles away - I love giving surprises like that.  I had a CD with all her images with me.  We spent the day together catching up on old times, and then her husband got home from work.  Well, she had definitely met and married the perfect guy.  He loved the pictures I had taken of her.  And I am so happy I was able to give the pictures to them.

Some photographers, perhaps most, only keep images for a year or two.  Barring a catastrophe, I pretty much keep them forever.  I have photos that I took over 50 years ago, LOL.  I also have family photos that were taken as far back as 1892.  And now they've been digitized and loaded on external hard drives, some of which are kept off premises for safe keeping.

I had planned today of talking about what I like to photograph, and then I got the sad news.  But very briefly, I like to photograph people when they look their very best, and I like for everyone to enjoy themselves while doing that.  Below are two photos from one of our sessions (shot about 30 years ago) - both images shot with Nikon FTn, on B & W film, natural light, one reflector (plus x film most likely - no meta-data from those days):

The image below was taken during a break, with the self timer, of me (the photographer), and Linda (the model) - as mentioned, I like everyone to have a good time (and I think she was, LOL).