Passing It On

Devlin's dad at age 4.

Maybe they have a thing about spray.

(Click to enlarge)

 

Yesterday I sent my Dad’s last camera kit, the one he used for some years before his death to my grandson, Devlin, a strapping freshman at the University of Tennessee. I’m sad that they never got to know each other, because they would have liked each other immensely. Dad died in 2000 at the age of 90 and Devlin was born in 2001.

Dad, an enthusiastic photographer for at least the second half of his life, was especially proud of his first good camera, a Kodak Signet rangefinder with a 44mm Ektar f3.5 lens which was very highly rated at the time. I can vouch that his slides from my wedding scan every bit as well as slides from my Olympus Zuikos and Canon L lenses of later years. He never made it into the digital age with cameras, but did a prodigious amount of writing on one of the early word processors. A specialist in radio and television electronics, he was always interested in new technology.

Dad owned many different cameras after the Signet, but I’ve always felt he did his best work with that one. His final kit was a Canon AE-1 and an AT-1, similar to the AE-1 but without auto-exposure, and several lenses. That’s what I passed along to Devlin.

Will he use the cameras? Probably not now, as a busy college student, but maybe later they’ll mean something to him. He took a film photography course in high school, so he has the basics if he wants to go that route. He appears to be more interested in video than still photography. His first camera was a Panasonic G7, which I helped him choose. He now has moved on to a Canon 6D II. 

Devlin has a broad range of interests, including bio-physics and biomedical engineering, as well as computer-brain interfaces. Way over my head. Apparently Dad's technology gene skipped two generations. He would have been proud of his great-grandson.

I took Devlin to some photojournalism seminars while he was in high school because I wanted him learn more about the field of professional photography, and also how difficult it is to get established in it. It’s always been difficult to make a good living in photography, and is now almost impossible for most people. I'm grateful for the life I've had in photography. Sadly, I can't recommend that life to my grandson, as conditions exist today, but I pass along what I can.

Blog Note: I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at alifeinphotography.blogspot.com. I'm trying to build up my readership, so if you're reading this on Facebook and like what I write, would you please consider sharing my posts?

(Photograph copyright David B. Jenkins 2020)

Soli Gloria Deo

To the glory of God alone