George and Greg

My father-in-law was an imposing figure of a man. Born in tough times, a tough place and tough circumstances, at age 65 he was still a big, strong man. My son was just learning to walk. I was learning to use a 35mm single lens reflex camera and to process my own black-and-white photographs. On this day in 1975, all those factors aligned so that this moment was captured.

My camera was a Konica Autoreflex T2 and the lens was a Hexanon 52mm f1.8. I’m certain of this because it was the only camera and lens that I owned at the time. The film was Kodak Plus X and was probably developed in D-76. The print was, well, not very good until, years later, I scanned the original negative and processed the scan in Photoshop.

The Konica Autoreflex T2 had a semi-automatic exposure mode. First the shutter speed was set and then the camera automatically selected the aperture to match that speed. I don’t recall whether I used my Konica’s auto-exposure for this particular shot. Probably not, because the window is badly overexposed; the automatic exposure probably would have done a better job on the window but at the expense of the main subject. I probably pointed the camera down at the floor, got an exposure reading and set it manually. I’d like to think so anyway – even if I missed the best exposure setting.