A Tale Of Two Weston Master V Light Meters, Etc.

The fun part about writing this blog is trying to figure out what to write to go with each photo. Sometimes it takes a bit of convoluted thought to make the connection. Bear with me. My Weston Master V was in current production when Peter Tepper made this utterly fantastic photograph of me looking utterly bored shitless. The other two? I'd met Shirley Rigby while she worked as an editor at the soon to be defunct Miami News. I'd met Jon Sinish a year or two earlier at the annual Wilson Hicks Photojournalism Conference at the U of M before it was named after him.

I was wearing horizontal stripes on my shirt in an effort to make myself appear heavier while Jon was wearing vertical striped trousers because (choose one) they were fashionable, vertical stripes are supposed to make you look taller, or they were all that Good Will had in his size.

Well, Shirley had left the Miami News to take her British accent to Manhattan and do some editing for Time Magazine. I was driving to Massachusettes to visit my dad and on the way spent a couple of days at Jon's apartment in Westport, CN. Shirley took the train up to Westport for the weekend and Peter had his camera handy. I guess he wanted to preserve the moment so future generations could ponder (choose one) why anybody in their right mind would wear diagonally checked trousers with a shirt featuring horizontal stripes under a corduroy jacket, was Shirley jealous that both Jon and I were blessed with curly hair while she had straight hair, or would anybody end up giving a damned about any of it. Thirty-eight years later Jon and I stay in touch via phone, email, and an occasional visit. I lost touch with Shirley about thirty-five years ago, but if she reads this, or if you know where she is these days, I'd love to get in touch with her again.

My once shiny new Weston Master V light meter is rather old now. A few years ago it made a trip to Hollywood, CA so George at Quality LightMetric could perform his magic and make it work like new again. He did and it did, but I don't like being caught meterless so I also purchased a rebuilt meter from him. Last week one of them stopped working, but I was going to wait until after the holidays to ship it to George. Yesterday the other one died. This morning they got packed for travel and they both started their westward trip, holidays be damned. I need a working meter!