the dennisbecker.org
website
Commentary
In the Beginning
In the beginning God... No, No, that's not it. I want to talk about my beginning. My beginning in photography that is.
It all started when someone gave me a Kodak Brownie Starflex camera
like the one to the left as a Christmas present when I was 10 or 11
years old. I have read that many famous musicians felt an
immediate affinity for the instrument the first time they held one.
That is what happened to me. There was something special about
holding a camera in my hands. It is something you know, you feel
connected to and is an extension of yourself.
This
is a picture of my sister Karen demonstrating how they made apple butter
more than a hundred years ago. Our family went to Worden Illinois
as part of a vacation in 1959. It was one of the photographs I
took with my Brownie camera. It was taken in the attic of my
fathers cousin's house. The house was a living museum with steep
stairs, high featherbeds, and wedding gowns of our ancestral brides.
There was even a German organ in the parlor that had the ancient German
script on the knobs. Being 12 though, the trip was a bit of a bore
because all we did was visit relatives. No Disneyland or amusement
parks. No kids our age. Not even an central park. We did visit a few
cemeteries though. Great fun, right? Despite all of this, I
still have vivid memories of driving down country roads and highways in
the late afternoon seeing the golden glow of the late afternoon sun on
the wheat and corn fields. It provided a warm feeling of peace and
safety. I have often thought of returning to the fields of Kansas
and Illinois to see the fields again. Those memories were what
caused me to ask our Tuk-Tuk driver, who was driving us around the ruins
in Sukhotthai, to stop so I could photograph a rice paddy in the late
afternoon sun. The verdant color is simply awesome.
I
really didn't take a lot of pictures with my Brownie camera. It
wasn't until I was in high school where I became friends with someone
who was a photographer for the school newspaper and school yearbook.
Through that friendship, I also became a photographer for the school
newspaper and yearbook. The school had a darkroom and a Rolleiflex
camera. The Rolleiflex was an outstanding medium format camera
and build like a tank. I learned to develop film and make prints.
I took pictures at all the sporting events and it even got me on the
sidelines for a Denver Bronco football game when the high school band
played at halftime. I got summer jobs and used some of the income to
purchase a used Miranda 35mm camera. In college, I didn't spend a
lot of time taking pictures. The Physics curriculum at the
University of Colorado and the part time jobs that were necessary to
help pay for it all prevented me from spending much time on photography.
It wasn't until I got out of graduate school and got a good paying job that I really got serious with photography. I quickly purchased a Minolta SR-T 101 camera and several lenses. Later I moved up to a Minolta XE-5. Then in the early 1980's, I went to Japan on a business trip. While there I purchased a used Mamiya 645 medium format camera. Since then, all my photographs have were taken with Mamiya 645 cameras until 2007, when I shifted to digital cameras. I my film days, I always shot slide film because of the vibrant colors. I used Kodachrome during my 35mm camera days. In my medium format film days, I primarily shot Ektachrome except for a period of time when Kodachrome was available in medium format. Later (around 1997) I migrated to Fujichrome. During this time I did my own printing in bathrooms, closets, or anything that I could make dark. All my color prints were made on Cibachrome paper (which later became Ilfochrome). The paper produced brilliant colors and was extremely fade resistant. Unfortunately the paper became hard to find. Actually, the paper was available but the chemistry necessary to develop the prints became almost impossible to find. In addition, shipping regulations for the chemistry were so burdensome that mail order and internet camera stores would not ship the chemistry. The paper and chemistry is still available, but only commercial printers will go through the effort to obtain the paper and chemistry. This is what largely forced me into the realm of digital photography.
I rather like digital photography. I have found that my 10 megapixel camera can produce outstanding pictures with a high resolution. I have an Epson printer that can produce pictures as large as 13'' wide. I have printed many of my photographs on 13" x 19' paper. In comparison, the largest prints I could make with my enlarger was 11" x 14". While the color of the prints are not quite a rich as the Ilfochrome prints, they are quite good. In addition the prints are archival, which means they will not fade in our lifetime. I have found that the photo editing software has opened up a whole new world of print making for me. I have found that many of my slides have a color cast caused by the natural lighting. The photo editing tools allow me to filter the color casts out. This can produce a much more dramatic photograph than what I could print in a darkroom. In other cases, the color cast is important to the picture and I want to leave it in.
Because Ilfochrome is essentially unavailable, I have started to scan in my slides so I can print them on my Epson photo printer. I have had several flat bed scanners over the years that can scan photographic slides. I have not been particularly impressed with the results. However, in mid 1010, I purchased a Canon flat bed scanner. It uses LED lighting instead of the old florescent lighting. In addition, i purchased some good scanning software and that has helped produce very good scans. Thus far, most of the photographs on this web site are digital, but I plan to sort through thousands of slides and scan in the best ones. Those will be posted on this web site, so it should keep growing.