A Thank You To The Hunt Bros.

The Hunt brothers decided that the solution to going from extremely wealthy to obscenely wealthy was to corner the market on silver, drive up the price, then bail out. It almost worked.

In the meantime the price of film was skyrocketing as the price of silver went up and up. One night I was sitting around chatting photography with my friend Al Olme and some others, probably including Nathan Benn, Al Wessel, and Paul and Louise Dana, and the topic if conversation was film and paper prices.

One idea that we knocked around was making a film that could be processed in color chemistry. I think it was still C-22 at the time, not C-41. The idea was that it would have a black dye image and all the silver gets bleached out and reclaimed, just like color film. We didn't know it at the time but across the Big Pond Ilford was already working on it. Soon they introduced XP-1.

Al Olme At Browne's Photo Center ~ Spotting Prints

Here's another one of those circa 1969 photos. This was shot inside Brownes Photo Center while it was still on the corner of N.W. 22nd Ave. and 79th Street.

That show case behind Al was where all the used cameras and lenses were displayed, but it was those drawers below that held the real treasures. Those were the famous "Junk Drawers". They contained everything from oddball flash synch cords to filters nobody ever heard of. When Brownie bought out a bunch of used photo equipment the big stuff went on display. The rest got shoved in a drawer.

Eventually Al moved out of town, the store moved over to Biscayne Blvd and 82nd Street, and both the the quality and quantity of the junk quickly spiraled down hill. When Brownie died it was all over but the shouting.

August 1973 ~ The "New" 4X5 View Camera

I never really thought of myself as a large format photographer but I ran into a great deal on a Graphic View II with a 203mm f/7.7 Ektar and a 100mm Wide Field Ektar. I bought it. Al Olme was using my darkroom and his 4X5 Omega D-2V enlarger was in it. I was sure that I could use the camera on enough jobs to justify the investment, and I did.

First I had to get up to speed on using the thing, though. Browne's Photo was stocking some off brand 4X5 film at a very reasonable price. I bought a 100 sheet box.

Elena had just turned two, the woman on the lower right was my wife Stephanie. The other woman was Carlene Wagner. I'd met her through Jane Ross and Shirley Rigby. The three of them were copy editors at the Miami News, close friends, and lived near one another in Coconut Grove. When the Miami News folded Shirley got a job with Time Magazine in New York. I met up with Shirley a few times when I was in New York, but within a couple of years I'd lost touch with the three of them. I heard that Shirley had moved back to England where she was from.

About a year later I concluded that I really wasn't a large format kind of photographer and sold the Graphic View camera outfit at a modest profit.

Girl Watching, Fancy Foot Work

Al Olme shot this back about 1969. He made the print and even signed it. (Al, get famous fast so I can sell the print for big bucks and retire in style!)

I have no idea as to where this was taken or why, or who that couple might be. The odd thing is that their hair styles wouldn't look out of place today.

I can imagine the guy with a lot more grey, perhaps balding. The girl would be sixtyish. Likely as not a kid or two would have affected her figure. Or they both might be dead.

A few years later Al moved to Minneapolis. Since then I've spoken with him a few times but haven't seen him. He was a big fan of Minolta cameras back then so this was probably shot with a Minolta ST-101. I was most likely shooting with my Leica M4.