Jessica Timmins Venturi 3 December 2019

Making love to a double bass

My first camera was an Agfa Silette which I  bought in a Washington DC pawnshop when I went on a class trip there from our boarding school in Austin Texas in 1956. I was soon frustrated in that I could not remove the lens. So in 1958 I purchased an East German Pentacon-F with a Zeiss F-2.8 Tessar lens. 

Since then I have not hoarded or collected cameras. For my career as a magazine photographer beginning in 1976 in Vancouver I bought the cameras that would make me competitive in a tight field. That was the reason why by 1979 I was getting lots of work. Art directors liked my 6x7cm Mamiya RB-67. Its revolving back made it popular and useful for horizontal tww-page spreads and the vertical position for full page bleeds.

Seven years ago my Rosemary strongly urged (nagged) me to get a digital camera. This was a Fuji X-E1 and more recently I obtained an improvement, the Fuji X-E3.

For my personal work (the only work I can generate since I am obsolete, redundant, retired & inconsequential) I like to use film, unusual film panoramic cameras and whatever device will produce original and interesting images in my taste.

Such a device has been my no SIM card iPhone3G. In low light situations with little contrast it works wonders that I believe cannot be obtained by better phones or expensive digital cameras.

My latest efforts (last week with Jessica Timmins Venturi, and in the company of  Portland baroque bassist Curtis Daily, I have been left  in awe at what I can do with this camera (camera it is) when I dial down the intensity of my studio flash units’s modeling light.