the last word

Merle Travis wrote two songs in his career that overshadowed all his others. He wrote them in the same evening, under intense pressure. With an album contract in hand, a recording session the next day, and an order from his producer to write some “…songs that [sound] folky” Travis recalled his mining-country upbringing, and turned… [Read More]

Fifty years ago, I was buying a lot of film. In 1957 I was working for both my high school newspaper and yearbook, and going through 8 or 9 rolls of 35mm Tri-X a week. Even though it was the school’s money, I remember exactly what it cost. Twenty exposures were 85 cents, and a… [Read More]

When I was eight, our family went on a two week driving vacation from Indiana to the Black Hills, Yellowstone, and the Colorado Rockies. I’d been taking black and white photographs with my Brownie Hawkeye and making contact prints in a darkened bathroom. For the trip, I wanted to try color film, which cost a… [Read More]

When I was exposing film, I noticed that, regardless of the format, I’d expose about the same number of square inches of film for a given type of subject. Said another way, after a day’s work, I’d have the same number of contact sheets to deal with, no matter which camera I used. I once… [Read More]

There’s a saying in the military that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. There’s a corollary in photography. No matter how much you plan and scheme and try to work things out ahead of time, the making of the image never goes quite the way you thought it would; this is especially… [Read More]