After a few years of film I'm picking up lots of learning about digital. I love the impact photography has had and can have on history and society. And I love how elegant it can be in the hands of talented people.
JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald and a Vietnamese Colonel.
When I was in the last year of jr. high school JFK was at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs giving the commencement speech for that year's graduating class. My house was a couple blocks away from his motor route that he would take back to Air Force One at Peterson Field. I can't say I remember his face all that well from that day but he went by in his Lincoln without the top and was waving to the crowds gathered along Platte Avenue. 3 years later when in study hall the school announced that the President had been shot in his motorcade and killed and everyone should go home. The rest of the world pretty much ceased to exist as the news cycles played out all that week.
Most of what I remember of him was a great sense of humor and wit. He was supposed to be the future and it was supposed to be rosy and full of promise. But this was the sixties and it wasn't anything like the 50's. Watching his funeral procession that weekend was life frozen in time. And it only got more bizarre when his killer was murdered live on TV. It felt like an ominous cloud had descended over the nation. Then the Zupruder film and Life magazine came out and it all graphically detailed the death and loss of a leader much of the world admired and loved. The nation was wounded and it needed time to heal. But the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy followed. And the Viet Nam war and all the social unrest made the 60's a decade I wanted to be over. The only thing that happened that seemed worthwhile was the moonshots. They were beyond spectacular.
Later in my 30's I took to photography as a way to finding some kind of creative epiphany that would lead to making a living. I went to Steamboat Springs and attended some workshops that invited National Geographic, Life, Parade and other photographers of note to speak. One was Eddie Adams with his white hair - an intense boozer who lived his life at full throttle and saw a lot of death covering Vietnam. You might have seen his Pulitzer Prize photo of the South Vietnamese General executing a Viet Cong captive. He also told of his assignments to shoot Castro, Queen Elizabeth. He died an early death a few years ago after having been the lead photographer for Parade Magazine. Another was the photographer who shot the Natl Geo cover of a Peruvian boy crying because a bus had run down his father's flock of sheep. And another was a Natl Geo photographer who shot the famous cover of the Afghan girl with the electric blue eyes - William Allard and Steve McCurry. Another was Jody Cobb who photographed Bedouin women in Northern Africa for Natl Geo.
In my stretch of photography I acquired a slug of lenses, filters and various related accessories. I put an ad in the local paper wanting to sell a wide angle that I didn't need any longer. One of the staff photographers of that paper called me about it. I met him there and got to meet another staff photographer who also shot a Pulitzer Prize. He was Bob Jackson and his photo is the one of Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald.
Photography is sometimes a hard pursuit. From hours waiting for great light in various National Parks and alleyways to getting up in the dark and cold to drive to a great spot that you're hoping would play out to make something worthwhile. Lugging a huge bag of equipment and tripod over distances that tax your limits. And when it did work out you got a sense that you got at least one good one. That you learned enough to capture what you envisaged.
JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald and a Vietnamese Colonel.
When I was in the last year of jr. high school JFK was at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs giving the commencement speech for that year's graduating class. My house was a couple blocks away from his motor route that he would take back to Air Force One at Peterson Field. I can't say I remember his face all that well from that day but he went by in his Lincoln without the top and was waving to the crowds gathered along Platte Avenue. 3 years later when in study hall the school announced that the President had been shot in his motorcade and killed and everyone should go home. The rest of the world pretty much ceased to exist as the news cycles played out all that week.
Most of what I remember of him was a great sense of humor and wit. He was supposed to be the future and it was supposed to be rosy and full of promise. But this was the sixties and it wasn't anything like the 50's. Watching his funeral procession that weekend was life frozen in time. And it only got more bizarre when his killer was murdered live on TV. It felt like an ominous cloud had descended over the nation. Then the Zupruder film and Life magazine came out and it all graphically detailed the death and loss of a leader much of the world admired and loved. The nation was wounded and it needed time to heal. But the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy followed. And the Viet Nam war and all the social unrest made the 60's a decade I wanted to be over. The only thing that happened that seemed worthwhile was the moonshots. They were beyond spectacular.
Later in my 30's I took to photography as a way to finding some kind of creative epiphany that would lead to making a living. I went to Steamboat Springs and attended some workshops that invited National Geographic, Life, Parade and other photographers of note to speak. One was Eddie Adams with his white hair - an intense boozer who lived his life at full throttle and saw a lot of death covering Vietnam. You might have seen his Pulitzer Prize photo of the South Vietnamese General executing a Viet Cong captive. He also told of his assignments to shoot Castro, Queen Elizabeth. He died an early death a few years ago after having been the lead photographer for Parade Magazine. Another was the photographer who shot the Natl Geo cover of a Peruvian boy crying because a bus had run down his father's flock of sheep. And another was a Natl Geo photographer who shot the famous cover of the Afghan girl with the electric blue eyes - William Allard and Steve McCurry. Another was Jody Cobb who photographed Bedouin women in Northern Africa for Natl Geo.
In my stretch of photography I acquired a slug of lenses, filters and various related accessories. I put an ad in the local paper wanting to sell a wide angle that I didn't need any longer. One of the staff photographers of that paper called me about it. I met him there and got to meet another staff photographer who also shot a Pulitzer Prize. He was Bob Jackson and his photo is the one of Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald.
Photography is sometimes a hard pursuit. From hours waiting for great light in various National Parks and alleyways to getting up in the dark and cold to drive to a great spot that you're hoping would play out to make something worthwhile. Lugging a huge bag of equipment and tripod over distances that tax your limits. And when it did work out you got a sense that you got at least one good one. That you learned enough to capture what you envisaged.
© David M. Kline