If Smiles Could Smile ~ Marilyn Davis

I guess this was about 1971 or thereabouts and Marilyn live down the street a few houses the other side of 14th Ave. She was a pretty girl of perhaps 18 0r 19 and wearing her hair in the then fashionable "shag". My living room today doesn't look all that different than it does in the photos. I still have the lamps but at some point the silk shades got too tattered and were replaced. Same thing with the drapes. The sofa in this photo had been my mom's before she died about fifteen years ago, and ours had seen two toddlers turn into young adults. In other words it had seen better days.

The balls were a popular toy of the day. The idea was to rythmicly raise and lower your hand to keep the balls bouncing off of one another. The person who could do it the longest won! Marilyn was good, very good. Then at some point they moved. I haven't seen her since. I miss that smile.

The fish-eye lens was an inexpensive one marketed by Spiratone. I think it was only about $39.95. It made a circular image a bit too big to fit the entire circle on the negative, and it was most likely mounted on a Pentax. It was really a very sharp lens! I probably used bounce electronic flash to freeze the motion of the balls. I shot it for a newspaper story about this latest craze. The scans are off of prints that had sat in my files since 1971.