Art, Craft and Discovery

Easter Sunday 1957 – Brooklyn, Ohio

My Mom made this photograph with the family Kodak Hawkeye Brownie camera. They had the Flash Kit version. Indoors a couple of Easter’s later shows the sharp shadows from the flash bulb, behind me and my brothers.

Handheld because the camera had no tripod socket. It had a single shutter speed of about 1/30th of a second or Bulb aka Long, as long you held it open. The lens was a fixed focus meniscus. The manual said everything from 5ft to Infinity would be in focus, so selfies were mercifully, not possible. The Hawkeye aperture was also fixed at about f16. What she knew to do was get us outside in bright sun aka the “Sunny 16 Rule”. The film box explained it. Same with the flash attachment indoors.

Film size was 616 so most of the prints were simply contact prints. Fill out the envelope at the local drug store, keep the receipt part and drop it in the bin. They sent it out and a few day later, you picked up the prints and negatives. Sixty six years later, I scanned it, edited the now digital version in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop and made the version you’re seeing.

The six year old you see has been discovering the world ever since. The last dozen years, with photography. I’d write “with a camera” but that’s almost the least of it. And it became time to stop and reflect and write. It takes time to really see a thing

This Menu Category is going to be sort a working draft of what may become a book. It begins with Art, the Why. Craft is the How and enables Art. Discovery, that’s the journey. The teacher in me would like to share what I’ve found, before mine ends.