{"id":67,"date":"2011-09-18T03:23:51","date_gmt":"2011-09-18T08:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oldnaturalist.com\/?p=67"},"modified":"2013-07-11T10:44:34","modified_gmt":"2013-07-11T15:44:34","slug":"how-a-brownie-reflex-camera-helped-me-become-a-naturalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/oldnaturalist.com\/?p=67","title":{"rendered":"How a Brownie Reflex Camera Helped Me Become a Naturalist"},"content":{"rendered":"

I must have been 8 or 9 years old and I was exploring Sespe Creek. I saw a bird I named the \u201cwhopper\u201d because when it was frightened, it made a call of \u201cWhop-Whop\u201d. I really wanted to know what its name was, so I decided to try and get a photo of it and then show it to my teacher. My parents had a Brownie Reflex Camera that I began taking down to the creek with me. The Brownie Reflex was a simple camera of the 1950\u2019s. It was a 20 mm wide-angle camera and took only black and white film. The only way I could actually look at a picture, was to get it developed at the camera store (all of which are out of business \"\"<\/a>now). Since the camera had only a 20 mm lens, it meant that I would have to be 10 feet from the \u201cwhopper\u201d before the bird was visible in the picture. Fortunately I did not know that at the time and became obsessed with trying to get a photo of the bird. Its \u201cfright distance\u201d was about 50 feet, so it took off before I was able to see it in my view finder. But in the mean time, I discovered plenty of things at Sespe Creek that I didn\u2019t know existed. I saw muskrats, blue herons, turtles, canvas-backed ducks, kingfishers and other beautiful creatures.<\/cite><\/p>\n

camerapedia.wikia.com\/wiki\/Kodak_Brownie<\/strong>_Reflex<\/strong><\/cite><\/p>\n

One day, I came to one of my favorite spots on the creek and there was the \u201cwhopper\u201d right in front of me. I snapped the photo and the bird took off. I couldn\u2019t sleep that night because I was so excited, and brought my film into the camera store. It took a week for the film to be developed and returned to the store. When I paid for the black and white pictures, the photo of the \u201cwhopper\u201d was not in it. I searched the negatives and found one that looked like it had a small dot in the background of the picture. I begged the owner of the the camera store to develop it for me, even though he said nothing would show up. I waited another week for the photo to come back, and when I finally got the photo, there was a small fuzzy blob in center of the picture. I think that was the last day I took the camera with me, but by that time I was hooked on the wonders of Sespe Creek.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t do any more photography till I was 18 years old, when my parents bought me a Nikkormat camera with a 70-230 zoom lens. I used this camera primarily on ships photographing dolphins and whales that were near the boat. It was a heavy camera and tough. I dropped it on the deck of the ship several times before it finally wore out.<\/p>\n

In the last ten years I have become very serious about photography again, using photos for work. I have re-learned some of the things I learned when I was a kid at Sespe Creek.<\/p>\n