He built his own dark room in the basement and spent many, many hours feeling his way around in there. He still has tender nasal passages from the acidic fumes rising above those trays.
Then Dave became a photographer in the Air Force. He attended photo school in Denver where he learned optics and darkroom techniques, and how to operate the processing machines that handled the various formats of aerial photography. Again, he spent many, many hours in the dark with those fumes.
The great thing about the Air Force was that Dave had access to all that wonderful photographic equipment. His personal favorite was an 8x10 Dierdorf view camera that he would take up into the mountains on weekends, just like his idol Ansel Adams. His working camera was a 4x5 Speed Graphic, which at that time was the leading camera for newspaper photographers.
While in the Air Force, Dave learned the art and science of color photography, from shooting to processing. Together with a lab buddy, they started a local business at the house in town, processing and printing color film. They were the first in Omaha to provide that service.
After the service, Dave evolved into motion picture production. It started while he was working as an assistant for a Detroit car photographer. Paul of Peter, Paul and Mary approached him to help make a film about a soldier who is trapped during battle inside a culvert. Dave was to be the cinematographer. This was his first experience with an Arriflex. It was love at first sight.
The completed film was very hip for its time with its anti-war message. And it started Dave on a lifelong avocation making movies. Ultimately he formed a partnership with another friend and they began making films for business and television.
Initially, they would sell a film project, then rent the camera gear from Victor Duncan. The night before a job, both would hang out with Duncan's rental agent and he would show them how to operate the equipment. They learned a lot of different motion picture film cameras that way. Must have been doing something right though. They stayed in business for over 15 years.
So why am I telling this story? Well today I received news of a passing; the demise of the motion picture film camera. According to an article in Salon by Matt Zoller Seitz, three of the major motion picture camera manufacturers have discontinued manufacture of film cameras this past year.
We might as well call it: Cinema as we knew it is dead.
An article at the moviemaking technology website Creative Cow reports that the three major manufacturers of motion picture film cameras — Aaton, ARRI and Panavision — have all ceased production of new cameras within the last year, and will only make digital movie cameras from now on.And on July 12th, 2010, the last roll of Kodachrome film was processed. It belonged to a photographer named Steve McCurry. David Friend mentions it in Vanity Fair.
McCurry’s final stop, on July 12, 2010: Dwayne’s Photo, in Parsons, Kansas—the only lab on Earth that still developed Kodachrome—which halted all such processing in late December.
What did he choose to shoot on the last frame of that last roll? A statue in a Parsons graveyard (in the section reserved for Civil War veterans), bearing flowers of the same yellow-and-red hue as the Kodak package.These two moments frozen in time mark the end of an era. An era over a century long when chemical and mechanical photography was King. Cinematographer Keith Clark befittingly sums up our loss.
As clunky as the old form was—by modern standards—it did require a certain artistic determination, to learn the techniques and master the equipment. That aspect was usually appreciated by the audience and inspired them to pursue similar artistic paths.The King is dead. Long live the King!
