Let’s see some of the earliest photos you’ve made —

Not my first photo, but one of the early ones in the 1970’s.

This is my wonderful cat, Taffy, at home.

The AM radio on the arm of the couch was my window to the world; I made a custom cloth covering for it. The luxurious FM radio above it has my homemade “stereo“ switch atop it - it was a simple potentiometer that balanced two bare speakers, but the input was monaural.862663DA-A60D-412D-86B6-7BCF08D9F56F.jpeg
 
Not my first photo, but one of the early ones in the 1970’s.

This is my wonderful cat, Taffy, at home.

The AM radio on the arm of the couch was my window to the world; I made a custom cloth covering for it. The luxurious FM radio above it has my homemade “stereo“ switch atop it - it was a simple potentiometer that balanced two bare speakers, but the input was monaural.View attachment 4820675
Oh, I thought for a moment it might be a self-portrait... ;)
 
Sunrise on a frozen December morning in 1974. One of the most amazing sunrises I've ever seen. Shot from the car along the highway in Northern Colorado as a friend and I were heading north into Wyoming and on west to Oregon. I was using one of my trusty Nikon Fs and an 85/1.8 Nikkor lens. This was shot on Kodachrome II film. I think that was the last year Kodachrome II was being distributed due to the introduction of Kodachrome 25.


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It’s a drab overcast day today so I sat down at the computer and found some of the photos I made while in high school. These were shot around 1964 I’d guess.

For those folks interested in the technical end I was shooting a Rolleicord V that was my dads and a Pacemaker Crown Graphic 4x5 that was mine and used press 25 and 5 flashbulbs. The film was Super Pancro Press type B ASA 250 made by Kodak run in DK50 1:1. The good old days! The 120 was a no name import I bought for around 26 cents per roll. The exception was the basketball shots which were on Kodak Royal X Pan. It was one grainy beast and I think the native ASA was 1200.

The band shot was some of my early pay jobs in high school. They were on 4x5.
 

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This my first 'favourite picture' i ever took - i was fascinated when i saw this slide back then - i went on to show it to all my friends. Summer 1992 (or thereabouts), i was 15 y.o and on holidays with my parents. I took my Praktica and went for a walk to the beach. Unfortunately i don't have any good scans of it and the slide is in Greece. This is a scan i made from a print many many years ago.

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I do not have access any more to the very early images I took (Germany in the mid '50s, as seen through a Kodak Brownie). I did recover however some of the first pictures I took with my first "real" camera, a Pentax Spotmatic, at the second Isle of Wight Festival (1970). These may have been among the first pictures I took with the Spotmatic. From the look of some of the negatives, it is clear that I had not figured out at that time how the meter worked and how the reading could be fooled by a bright sky ! Nevertheless, I had fun there !


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I do not have access any more to the very early images I took (Germany in the mid '50s, as seen through a Kodak Brownie). I did recover however some of the first pictures I took with my first "real" camera, a Pentax Spotmatic, at the second Isle of Wight Festival (1970). These may have been among the first pictures I took with the Spotmatic. From the look of some of the negatives, it is clear that I had not figured out at that time how the meter worked and how the reading could be fooled by a bright sky ! Nevertheless, I had fun there !


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They reming me of Woodstock. Great images.

When Woodstock happened I was chief photographer of my university paper. A couple of my friends and I planned on driving up to cover it but the weather was looking bad so we decided to not go and figured we’d go the next year. 😩 One of my friends however went anyway and got some great images. I’m still waiting for the next Woodstock but don’t think that’s going to happen. It would never be the same anyway and I’m not sure my old body could handle sleeping on the ground now. ☹️
 
Thank you for your kind words, x-ray !
Yes, the Isle of Wight festival was kind of similar to Woodstock, including attracting way more people than planned. I was priviledged to experience Jimi Hendrix's last performance (he died within weeks after that appearance), Joni Mitchell, John B Sebastian having close to half a million people do whatever he wanted them to do and to hear Leonard Cohen sing Suzanne ! It was my first real experience with Rock'n Roll (I was raised on French "chansonniers", Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens, Barbara, Anne Sylvestre and the like). Quite a mind expansion. Great memories. I wish I had taken my photography more seriously then, but I recall I was too taken by the experience.
 
Thank you for your kind words, x-ray !
Yes, the Isle of Wight festival was kind of similar to Woodstock, including attracting way more people than planned. I was priviledged to experience Jimi Hendrix's last performance (he died within weeks after that appearance), Joni Mitchell, John B Sebastian having close to half a million people do whatever he wanted them to do and to hear Leonard Cohen sing Suzanne ! It was my first real experience with Rock'n Roll (I was raised on French "chansonniers", Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens, Barbara, Anne Sylvestre and the like). Quite a mind expansion. Great memories. I wish I had taken my photography more seriously then, but I recall I was too taken by the experience.
What a great experience! Great way to experience rock.
 
Certainly not the earliest photo I made, but the earliest I have saved to digital.

The inside section of Jakes Point, in Kalbarri, Western Australia.

Following high school me and a mate took a gap year before uni, worked for 6 months and then spent 6 months driving a crappy old Mitsubishi station wagon from Melbourne to the WA desert. This shot was taken in Kalbarri towards the end of the trip. It would have been sometime in late 2005 - early 06.

While we were passing through Perth our car had been broken into. They didn't get much, but they did get the lovely Olympus C5060W that I'd been using the document the trip so far. As such, all my early shots were lost, and I photographed the last few weeks on a crappy p&s I'd borrowed from Dad. No idea what the model was...

 
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