While a sophomore at Howard University in the he early 1970's, I got the chance to learn photography as long as I worked on the college newspaper. My Pops got me a second hand camera, not even a SLR, but it worked for this purpose. Howard's "Hilltop Newspaper" Photo Editor gave me a hundred rolls of black and white film and told me to take pictures until I figured the whole process out. "The process" included taking decent photos, developing the film, and printing the photos. I had 24-hour access to the school's darkroom.
So I went "hither and thither", taking photos of everything I saw. I wrote down the f-stop and shutter speed settings, shooting several shots of the same subject. Then I went in the basement of the "Hilltop" building, threaded the film onto developing reels, dipped the reels in several vats of the nastiest smelling chemicals in the world. Then I hung the negatives up to dry. Next came the original "fixing it in the mix". With a professional style photo enlarger and all manner of tools of the trade, I placed my negs on the enlarger and started the development process for prints. You either "fixed" a bad photo by leaving it in the development chemicals longer or by using different times for how long the photo paper was exposed in the enlarger.
At about 200 rolls of film and one month, I had it. I never went anywhere without my camera. I became very close friends with another novice, Carolyn Wyatt (now Dr. Wyatt) who learned the same way that I did. Her parents had money so her camera was much better than mine. In fact, she started out with two Pentax SLRs. And her parents provided her with a darkroom in their spacious home near Rock Creek Park. We spend all of our days and nights in that darkroom since we didn't have to share darkroom time with the other Howard photographers.
I became a "photo-journalist" since my first love had always been writing. I loved sports so I covered the basketball, baseball, track and football games. I became noted for my basketball shots - I could catch a player in mid-air, right after he released the ball. And this was before all of the zoom and auto-focus crap that was to come down the pike in later years. I had to sit right under the basket, with one eye in the view finder and one on the players. The shot had to be gotten right before the two teams ran over me in the out-of-bounds area. It was even worse on the football field. But I did it and I got good. Not only that, but Carolyn ("Cookie") and her sister and I started going to the old Howard Theater, part of the "chit'lin circuit" chain of venues which also included the world famous Apollo Theater in Harlem and the Uptown in Philly. We met and photographed some of the best. From the Delfonics to Kool & The Gang, from Jimi Hendrix to Sly Stone. In the meantime, I also became the Sports Editor of the university yearbook "The Bison", the first female to hold that position. No one would have thought that my actual major was Theater Production!
I will be adding all of these afore-mentioned photos from time to time. I just got a brand new scanner but I have over 1000 photos to sift through, scan, and share. So please come back!
Looking Forward To Having You Aboard,
