Photographic Memories
by
Wayne Ralph
Three men on a dock at St. John's harbour, my Uncle Dan Ralph on the left.
Likely taken prior to or during the Second World War, but no other details have survived.
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Family history often comes with family photographs, but only occasionally are the names and places recorded for posterity. By the time you want to set down that history you have only your own memories to help, as all the rest of the family have passed on. The photographs from the 1950s and later are easier as I was sometimes the family photographer.
From a young age, perhaps 11 or 12 years old, I used the family camera, a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye, to take pictures. The Sunday picnic, summer birthday, or Christmas holiday were recorded on 620-sized rolls of black and white film. I bought American photography magazines, Popular Photography, Modern Photography, to learn the basics, and by the time I graduated from the university I was using a professional-calibre 35mm SLR. I read about the invention of the camera and its evolution in the 19th century, I studied the images of photojournalism because they seemed closest to my own activities. I knew about 19th century Matthew Brady and 20th century Man Ray. I learned to do darkroom work. How to make a solarized print, something that Man Ray, with the help of Lee Miller, invented. I could dodge and burn a print to enhance its look. You might say that I was an advanced teen-aged amateur. I never imagined a career in photography or photojournalism, but cameras have been part of my life since that first Brownie Hawkeye.
My first 35mm camera, one with a good lens, was sold to me by a smart fellow (in my memory a British chap named Peter) in a Winnipeg photography store. He knew I should learn more about shutter speeds, and f-stops, manual focusing, and hand-held light meters. He insisted I buy an Olympus Pen, a half-frame 35mm, that took 72 images on a 36-frame roll of 35mm film. His was good advice as it obliged me to do all the calculations manually. To guess the distance away of the subject and set that on the barrel of the lens. Then select a shutter speed and f-stop based on what the Sekonic hand-held meter recommended (Peter also picked the basic Sekonic light meter for me). Composing through the range-finder style viewing window, learning to adjust for parallax on close-ups, while holding the little camera steady. It was a pocket-sized wonder, and I would have several others of its size throughout my life, including a Rollei-35 and an Olympus Stylus.
Some of my first creative images were taken with the Pen.
The ones that would five decades later change my life were of Portuguese cod fishermen aboard a 1940-era schooner named Dom Denis of Portugal's White Fleet. Here are five examples:
I photographed the White Fleet vessel, Gazella Primeiro, with the SR-1. This barquentine, seen below in St. John's, was built in Setubal, Portugal in 1901. It retired from cod fishing in 1969, and then was bought and restored in America by the Philadelphia Ship Preservation Guild. It still sails each year in the 21st century.
Barquentine Gazella Primeiro at St. John's in 1967
Below: Minolta SR-1 35mm full frame single lens reflex
