"The Violinist"
© David A. Ziser

This image was photographed around 1968 while I was still in college. See "The Budding Photographer" story below. I did do a bit of post production work in Photoshop, mostly tweaking the vignetting and adding the grain - excuse me - noise. Camera specs; to the best of my recollection - Mamiya Sekor rangefinder camera with 50mm F2 lens, Tri-X 400 B&W film push processed to ISO 800. By the way, ISO was ASA back in the day. Enjoy! --David

Oldie But Goldie Wednesday

Good Afternoon Everybody,
Sorry about the late post again yesterday. I was pulling my hair out trying to get the video finished. But a call to Tech Smith's Camtasia support and selecting a different preference setting finally solved the video problem - about 2 hours later.

Anyway here we are on our Oldie - Goldie Wednesday. As promised, I going to board the "Ziser Way Back" machine and show you some of my first images - ever.

First a little history - my interest in photography started quite by accident when, at about age 13, I discovered some of my dad's early manuals for processing film and images. He even had some small 5x7 trays and the ruby red safelight. Yes, he was a hobbyist back in the 40's and now that interest was passing on to the next generation.

My friend, Russ (he is still one of my best friends even today) and I headed down to the local camera store and purchased our first quart of Kodak Dektol developer and a quart of Kodak fixer - we were ready to go. We grabbed some of my parents' negatives. They were really big back then - about 2 1/4" x 3 1/4" - being from 120/620 film format format used by their ever popular Brownie Hawkeye camera. I can still remember that first image coming up in the developer under the deep red glow of the safelight - what a kick - I was hooked!

The Really Early Training

I started high school the next year and now I had access to all the photo books in the library - which wasn't a big selection, but a start. My all time favorite was by Andreas Feninger entitled, "The Complete Photographer." I think I read it from cover to cover at least 5 times.

This was also about the time I started taking pictures, too. I remember finding one of my dad's old folding cameras, buying some film, taking the photos, and processing and printing them myself. The bug had definitely bit. I even started experimenting with "hot lights" (high output photoflood bulbs in inexpensive reflectors) portrait photography.

Here is my first attempt at a portrait taken around 1962. It's an image of my next door neighbor's young daughter. I used a bed sheet as a background. The lighting was a photoflood in a reflector supplying the accent light for the back with a less bright photoflood in a reflector giving me the light from the front. I know it's not perfect, but, hey, I still caught the baby's great expression. I believe, not a bad first effort for a 14 year old. I think I sold it for about $10. Big bucks back then. The entrepreneurial spirit was just budding.

I even bought my first real camera in 1964 - the Mamiya Super Deluxe rangefinder model. I paid a whopping $52.53 for the camera. My parents thought I was crazy to spend that kind of money.....especially on a camera.

The second image is post Photoshop. I know what you are thinking - "Hold on one minute, Ziser - that's cheating." Well, not really, remember, back in the good old days, we used real darkroom techniques called "burning and dodging" to get the print densities where we wanted them. Where do you think Adobe came up with those terms?

A year later, at age 15, I shot my first wedding. I was the proverbial friend of a friend shooting the job. A friend of my dad's at work had a daughter getting married and I got the job. My first medium format camera was a Yashica A. I was off and running!!

The Budding Photographer

After high school, I moved on towards college planning to get a chemistry degree. Because of the long lines for chemistry and due to a friend's coercion, I changed majors at the last minute and joined the Physics department. Yep, I have a degree in Physics, Industrial Engineering, and a minor in Math and Computer Science. If you've not figured it out already - I was a really "geeky" kid back in those early days.

All through college, I worked as a photographer. That job paid the rent, bought the books, and in general got me through school. Here is an image I made during a violin recital. The image was made on Kodak Tri-X ISO 400 film and "push processed" to about 800 ISO. I picked up quite a bit of contrast, but I still love the image to this day.

The second image from that I shoot is posted today as the "Image of the Day" above. I added a little noise, via Photoshop, for added effect. These images were made around 1968 - I was 20 years old at the time.

Fast Forward To 1975

The Cincinnati Reds had just won the 1975 World Series!! For all you baseball fans out there, this was the era of the "Big Red Machine" - Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, May, Perez, Joe Morgan, just to name a few. I was down on Fountain Square celebrating the victory with about a million other fans.

Of course I had my camera in hand and I shot this image. It too is still one of my early favorites. It was also one of my first published images winning one of the top awards in a local photography contest held by the Cincinnati Arts Consortium that same year.

OK, So How About An "Oldie But Goodie" Wedding Image

I was looking for some really old wedding images to post. I'll have more next week - but I did come up with this image. This is actually a copy from an old Polaroid print (remember you can't buy Polaroid film anymore.) I made this image about 28 years ago. It epitomizes the style of some of the images of the day.

I used a Curtis Matte Box which was a hot piece of equipment for the wedding photographer back in the 1980's. It was a black box fitted with a close up lens and attached to you medium format camera. It came supplied with a series of 21/4" x 2 1/4" glass mounted transparencies like the brandy snifter in this photo. First you took the photo of the brandy snifter, or a heart or star..... then double exposed the image of the bride and groom into the glass. It certainly was a lot more involved than Photoshop, but it still worked. If you are interested in even more of this exciting imagery, here is a link to an entire discussion thread on the subject over at photo.net right here.

Hey gang, that's it for today's "Oldies" post. Hope you enjoyed it. Please, be gentle with the comments, too - I'm baring my soul here, you know. I just pulled some images out of storage from 1979 - check back next week to see what I find.
Have a great one, David