So here it is as best I can recall. I was in seventh grade. Junior High we called it back then. I was not in sports, I gave up on the sax by 5th grade. I didn’t know how to play chess or talk to the other nerds. So I went to the meeting about Photo Club ( I still have the pin on a camera strap). I think we made photograms. Then we worked our way up to pinhole cameras made out of oatmeal containers. Eventually we made our way to camera film and processing.

By luck my folks had gotten a free gift with a subscription to Time or some other magazine. It was a 35mm camera. It had a fixed focus lens with 4 aperture settings. Cloudy, partly cloudy, partly sunny and Sunny. So basically a ƒ5.6 lens. It did have a flash mount though I think.

My Grandfather, Manville Passer, was an avid fan of photography. He documented the family on slides (which I inherited). Eventually we would talk about lenses and such as I moved more and more into photography. Somewhere I have a polaroid of me buying my first ‘real’ came at camera shop in downtown St. Paul. But I digress. For many years I’ve felt it was the influence of my grandfather and the support of my parents that led me to photography.

I have been scanning images lately to post on instagram in between new images. I came across this one of Manville from Christmas 1985. I believe this was one of the first rolls of film I developed. Manville passed away February 8, 2002.