First Roll, Leica Model A 1963

[doubs43]

This image is on the first roll of film my father took with a Leica Model A that he bought on 20 October, 1963 for $28. Film was Panatomic-X exposed at ASA 100 and developed in Accufine.

This is Doubs Road in Frederick County, Maryland, looking East. Our home in 1963 was roughly 1/4 of a mile past the bridge. The 1952 Chevy in the picture was my father's. Taken in October, the leaves were already falling from the sycamore trees along the road. (I think there was also a maple tree.) We lived on the edge of a small town in a sleepy rural area. It's no longer small or sleepy.



Walker

[herron]

Walker --
that's a neat picture. Brings back a lot of memories of other times. Just think of all the things today's kids are missing, because it is "no longer small or sleepy." I think the world of iPods and videogames leaves a lot to be desired...but I suppose you won't be able to convince the kids......

[kiev4a]

Yep. The square mile of farmland I roamed as a kid now is home to two schools and six subdivisions.

[John Parry]

Walker - suppose it's a little too late to comment on the composition of the picture (great). Wrong season I know, but would it be possible to get a picture of the same scene nowadays?

Wayne - There used to be a field where where my cousin and I used to hunt hares, using cricket stumps. We used to walk through the field with the stumps resting on our shoulders, and let fly when we put a hare up. Never hit one. Never came close. Occasionally we'd find a form of leverets (baby hares). That was when we'd look, wonder, and tiptoe away. Last time I was there, housing developments stretched three miles past the fields. OK - you have to look after the people, but I sometimes wonder - who's looking after the hares?

Regards - John

[kiev4a]

John:

When I was growing up we had a large barn--probably built in the late '20s or early '30s. Don't think it ever had been painted or that well maintained. The 40 acres my parents owned now is covered with houses but that old unpainted barn and the family home are still standing in the middle of all the new homes. I suspect the house and barn won't last much longer. The properety they sit on would probably be more valuable if it was bare ground. The only thing I really miss about the place is that the best dog anyone ever had (a border collie named Candee) is buried next to the barn.

[doubs43]

johnrparry said:

Walker - suppose it's a little too late to comment on the composition of the picture (great). Wrong season I know, but would it be possible to get a picture of the same scene nowadays?
Regards - John

Ron, Wayne & John, thank you all for the kind comments.

John, I now live 750 miles from there but I'll try to get a new picture the next time I'm up that way. My wife and I were just there over Christmas and while I took pictures of my parent's home (my nephew lives there now) and the homes being built in the field across from it, I didn't get a shot of the bridge and road.

This picture, from the same roll, was likely taken by my father by turning 90 degrees left and stepping across the road from where he took the bridge and road shot. The farm was owned by a man named John Renn who raised a lot of beef cattle and often had a mean bull among them. The embankment in the background is the main line of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, a double track in those days. The stone culvert is where the creek passes under the RR and is made of huge granite slabs. We had a swimming hole there. Until about 1962, an identical culvert straddled the road and carried a single track over the road about where the sign can be seen beyond my father's car in the original picture. It narrowed traffic to a single lane. We called it the "Cut-off" as it was used to temporarily hold the overflow of scrap metal waiting to go to Sparrow's Point in Baltimore to be melted down..... mostly war reclaimation material.


This next picture is the view from the corner of my father's property looking North East in 1963. I often used the barn to adjust infinity on various camera and to check the sharpness of a lens. The barn and the buildings around it are all gone to make way for a housing project. The field ran from the RR tracks in the first image above for more than a mile and is at least 1/2 of a mile wide at it's greatest width. The field directly East of Pop's home was even larger and also included the South area behind Pop's property. More houses have been built in parts of it. Makes me ill to see it now.

Note the large stones in the lower left corner. They are burr stones that were used to grind corn meal in the mill my father owned. No longer needed, my father placed them at the East corner of his driveway to keep people from backing across the lawn and rutting it. We were the last house and people used to use our drive to turn around. They didn't back into those stones more than once because they'd cause considerable damage. Pop moved the stones behind the house where they are to this day. They simply became too valuable to collectors to leave them where they could be stolen some night.


Wayne, this picture is of "King", my father's constant companion for over 13 years. He's a Tri-Color Collie and was a wonderful dog. He died in late 1968 and my father would never have another dog. It hurt too much when they go. We had owned his brother from an earlier litter but he'd been killed by a car. The first dog was prettier with a smooth shiney coat while King - as you can see - had a more ragged coat even though he was brushed periodically.


Walker

[John Parry]

Walker - what a superb dynamic range these photos have! Your dad has shown up my black and white efforts as rubbish! I can even even imagine the colours of the cows... Superb!

Regards - John

[doubs43]

johnrparry said:

Walker - what a superb dynamic range these photos have! Your dad has shown up my black and white efforts as rubbish! I can even even imagine the colours of the cows... Superb!

Regards - John

John, my father would undoubtedly be more than pleased to hear you say that although he'd surely disgree that your images are "rubbish". I'm certain that your family are very proud of your pictures. That's the greatest praise of all.

I'm now beginning to scan almost 60 years worth of negatives that Pop left... MANY thousands of them. It'll take years but I'm certain that it'll be worth the effort. Future family generations will have more than simply hearsay to appreciate the life of one of their ancestors. I expect to gain a better appreciation of his work as well.

The Model A Leica seems to have had either a flare problem that shows on bright days in the lower left corner or possibly a light leak. That will present a challenge when I get to the stage where I manipulate the saved images for possible printing. Other negatives I'll eventually scan include 6x6, 6x9, 4x5 and even 6x4.5 from a Foth-Derby, his first quality camera given to him by my mother for Christmas, 1939. I have it too.

Walker

[kiev4a]

Walker:

We got Candee, our border collie, a few months after we were married in 1967. She was our only child for five years and later our three daughters considered her a sister. She also lived to age 13. Died the day Ronald Reagan was shot. I remember the news of the assassination attempt really didn't register with he as at the time I was driving to the old homestead to bury Candee.
She's buried right here:

[herron]

doubs43 said:

....I'm now beginning to scan almost 60 years worth of negatives that Pop left... MANY thousands of them. It'll take years but I'm certain that it'll be worth the effort. Future family generations will have more than simply hearsay to appreciate the life of one of their ancestors. I expect to gain a better appreciation of his work as well.

Walker

Wow! That's an ambitious undertaking!

Just going through that many images takes a lot of time. I made a DVD for my father-in-law's recent 90th birthday party, and sorting through just some of my wife's old family photos to decide which were good enough to scan took the majority of the 80 hours I figure I spent doing it!

[doubs43]

Wayne, I think it's great to honor your Candee in that way. Dogs are special. They give complete love and ask for so little in return.... truly man's best friend.

Ron, this is a project I've been contemplating for a long time, trying to wait until I'd fully retired and could devote most of my time to it. I'm trying to scan at least one roll of film each day and there are 90 rolls taken with just the Model A Leica! I'm working on roll 5 now!

Last night I went to a Best Buy and purchased an Epson 4490 Photo scanner that is supposed to give optical resolution of 4600 dpi. I scan at 2400 dpi which takes about 2 minutes per 35mm negative. I had been using an Epson 4180 Photo that gives a nice scan but is much slower.

My father spent his entire life in a relatively small area, dying within 3/4 of a mile of the home he was born in. He was involved in photography for 60 of his 89 years and took a camera with him almost everywhere. He recorded a way of life over the years that will never be seen again. The Maryland Historical Society had expressed an interest in his negatives and the Smithsonian Institute selected about 120 of his prints for their Archives. Historians and Scholars use the Archives for research and it wouldn't surprise me to see one or more of his prints published one day. I would like to privately publish a book of his work that would be of interest to the people of Frederick County, MD. There's much, much more to his story and photographs than I can possibly write here. I think he'd appreciate having his life's work made available to others. Even if only the immediate family finds his photographs to be of interest, it will be worth the effort to me to honor my father in this way.

Walker