The First Photo

Circa 1978: After I got ahold of my Royal Father’s Polaroid camera, I busted off a couple of interesting shots... of a wall. Perturbed to see me wasting film, he offered to school me on taking a picture the right way. What you see above is the fruits of his effort.

Photos from my past and the tales they tell.

He set me up in the study, by his large roll-top desk. The Polaroid SX-70 was on a tripod, with a remote trigger button. All I had to do was look through the viewfinder and squeeze that big red button.

We should’ve used a flash. The banker’s lamp heavily backlit everything. The composition was fine. My framing was fine. But everything else was way too dark. I thought about putting this picture into Photoshop, but I decided you should see it as is.

Still, this was better than a wall. Dad had that SX-70 well into the 2000's, and he tried to use it again with film made by a company that bought a Polaroid factory in Kansas. Those pictures came out garbage, and he ended up selling the camera to somebody in Mexico. I told him the pinch rollers or probably something else in that camera needed to be cleaned.

Digging through the Royal Father’s other pictures, I noticed a few other blurry, fuzzy snaps. Those weren’t my work. Honest.