How many still have their first print?

[Vonder]

I grew up relatively poor. Still am. Poor, not growing up, though my wife may debate that. Anyhow. When I took HS photography class I was introduced to B&W developing and got the urge to do it at home. The chemicals and tanks and such were easy and cheap, but an enlarger was out of the question. So I made due. I used an old Viewmaster (remember them?) projector. Had to jimmy the negative down inside, tape it on, expose by turning the switch on and off. Very iffy results, but the first time I tried it I had success, and still have that (horrid) print to this day.

I'll scan it if anyone'd like to see it. It's a dog. Believe me.

Anyone else still have the first print you ever created on their own? I'm amazed mine has both stayed with me w/o getting thrown out and has survived poor storage.

 

[Akki14]

I can't remember exactly which print was the first but my high school had a darkroom and i have all my stuff from the course still.

 

[John Bartley]

I do .... and I'm darned proud of it ... errors and all .

Here it is : contact printed on Ilford RC using a chunk of glass on top of the film/paper on a plywood baseboard. I used a desk lamp with a 15watt bulb and the cover off a blue plastic report sleeve for a filter. I timed it by counting 1000-1, 1000-2 etc ... This was the keeper (probably attempt # 5 or 6 that day). It's a 4x5 negative and it was my first negative also. Ilford FP4 in Rodinal.

cheers

 

[jovo]

Anyone else still have the first print you ever created on their own?

No, I don't think I have the very first one, but I just came across a box of 8x10's from the early 70's that must include if not the first one, then certainly its immediate relatives. Wow! Do they ever suck!! Kodak Kodabromide matte paper not quite archivally fixed....nice old photo smell to them. They will...happily...fade completely away someday. One of the few advantages of poor technique is that it keeps your worst work from living on forever.

 

[pgomena]

Still have some of my first prints from my high school photography class, 35-years-distant. Yes, one of them is of my dog.

Peter Gomena

 

[winger]

I'm not sure where, but I'm fairly sure I have at least some of the earliest, if not the first. I know one is of a bee on a flower. That's from 9th grade, so about 1982ish.

 

[ann]

not the first, but one that is at least 50 years old.

what a hoot. It is so badly printed, and then on top of that it also was the first attempt at spotting.

i keep it to show my students, there is hope at the end of the trail.

 

[Joe Lipka]

I think I still have a copy of the first print I showed in basic photo. It was made on Kodak Polycontrast Rapid F surface, single weight. Ha! You have to be old to remember that paper.

I know I still have my first platinum print.

 

[Vaughn]

Well, I don't have it, but my mom still has it on her wall. Printed in the employee darkroom at the Grand Canyon in 1977. On Kodak RC -- over time it has gotten discolored and stained in places, but not too badly printed.

It is an image of me standing on the edge of the Canyon (self-timer on a Rollieflex)...a young guy at 23 years of age, standing way too close to the edge (according to my mom!) I was at the Canyon for about 5 months, pumping gas at the Chevron station on the rim...trying to earn/save enough money for the next year of university.

Vaughn

And yes, people were complaining to us about the high price of our gas in the National Park -- $0.69/gal for surpreme.

 

[Stephen Frizza]

110 prints were my first.

I still have the first negatives and first prints I ever took. I was 7 yrs old and my mother gave me a 110 camera to take pictures on and my favorite teddy bear had broken and my first picture was a macabre image of my bear with its head severed, sitting in its lap on a seat in my house. the following images were of
my sister holding drawing pens in her room , my mum cutting up mushrooms in the kitchen and my grandparents in the yard. the first image was a fluke it came out well, the following images on the roll were terrible i would press the shutter and the whole camera would move and blur everything. I remember my mother teaching me what I was doing wrong. These images are very dear to me.

~Steve
The Lighthouse Lab

 

[jim appleyard]

Yup, and what crap it is! I was taking HS photo, great teacher by the way, and we were using Plus-X & Tri-X. An outing club ski trip to Avalanche Pass in the Adirondack High Peaks was coming up and I was going to get Ansel Adams type stuff.

I was absorbing all the info from class, but back-ass-wards. I got Plus-X and Tri-X mixed up, the ISO's mixed up and thought that f/22 was wide open; after all, it is a bigger number!

The negs came out bullet-proof and I still spent globs of paper and time trying to get them right!

D-76, 1+0 for 7 min and Luminos S.W. fiber paper. The good old days!

 

[Steve Smith]

I don't have any of my original prints but my brother has one of them. A 5x7 print of a collection of National resophonic metal body guitars. It is fairly contrasty (as per my taste then) but is not too bad.

Steve.

 

[Tony Egan]

Yes - I have mine from 1983. It was of my wife sitting on the couch. 35mm Ilford FP4 negative. Ilford MG RC 8x10 paper with a pearl/satin finish as I recall. Developed in the bathroom of our two bedroom apartment. Enlarger balanced on a piece of particle board resting on the bathtub. LPL 67 colour head enlarger which I had to kneel down before to focus and expose. All Ilford chemicals. I may drag it out later and post.

 

[Jim Chinn]

I don't recall which was the first one I printed, but I do have a set of prints I made from my first roll of B&W film (tirX) in my first photography class back in 1982. The prints were on Kodak RC and the RC paper has held up fine.

 

[Vonder]

Ah, the venerable 110 format

I still have the first negatives and first prints I ever took. I was 7 yrs old and my mother gave me a 110 camera to take pictures on and my favorite teddy bear had broken and my first picture was a

<snip>

~Steve
The Lighthouse Lab

Darnit. I have a "Keystone" brand 110 camera sitting in a closet (which I inherited on my mother and sister's death). They still make film for it (?), amazingly. Now I'll have to go pull it out and shoot a roll.

 

[luvmydogs]

Though I've developed quite a few rolls of B&W film, believe it or not, I had never printed anything until last week! So yes, I have that print! I am addicted - I had so much fun and I can't believe I waited so long.

Here is my first print ever. Not the sharpest photo, but I think I was quite nervous when I took the photograph. Printed on Ilford RC Pearl paper. My scanner broke down so I had to take this photo of my print with my digicam. Hope that's ok.

 

[jovo]

Here is my first print ever. Not the sharpest photo, but I think I was quite nervous when I took the photograph.

Hah! If that had been my first print I'd be rich and famous by now!! Nicely done. Your definition of 'nervous' and mine aren't even in the same dictionary.

 

[Moopheus]

I don't know remember which print is my first, though I have saved a lot of old stuff. I was recently looking through some of my old photos, and based on the dates written on the back, and the subjects in the photos, they were made when I was about 10 or 11. I'm pretty sure I made some before that though. Those are the oldest ones I still have that I can actually date. I have some lab-processed rolls (both 110 and 135) that date to about the same epoch and may be older. It's all a blur now. But then, last week is kind of a blur now too.

It also looks like some of the stuff I did as a kid was actually better than the what I was doing in college.

 

[Marc Akemann]

Still Have My First Print(s)

I have the first slide (Kodachrome 64) from the first shot I've ever taken back in the summer of 1972 with my dad's Kodak Retinette 1A. This camera is still working and is on a shelf next to me as I type this.

I have the first print (a special thanks to Photo Hut ) from my very first camera I ever owned from October 1972, which was a Kodak Pocket Instamatic 10 Camera (a 110 camera). It was a 'from-the-belt-up' shot of my youngest brother, who was 7 at the time, in our backyard in Milwaukee. That camera, with a personalized sticker on the top, is next to the Retinette. Still have the negs, too.

And I have the first print I ever did all by myself, from the summer of 1980. It was just some assignment shot from a photography class in college. I remember going outside with the instructor, my classmates and my Minolta SRT102 and 50mm f/1.4 MC Rokkor lens, looking for something to photograph. I believe I ended up printing an image of some cattail plants and a couple of ducks that were about 40 feet (12.2 meters) away floating in some stagnant water that was near a bridge with the school in the background and some cars in the parking lot. One of my classmates might have been in the scene, too. Yes, I tried to get everything I could in that photo. Anyway, I still have those negs, too.

Marc

 

[shinjuku]

I still have my first roll of negs I developed and I remember making the prints from them. It was a roll of shots for my 7th grade yearbook with a couple of shots of my buddy jumping his bmx bike tagged on the end. I still have the prints of of the jumps and some of the others were printed and published in the yearbook which I still have somewhere..... It didn't look as if I was concerned about dust at the time.

 

[Removed Account]

I think I do have my first prints, or within spitting range. I was taking a high school photo class at City Academy in Toronto and had just bought my first 35mm SLR, a Minolta Maxxum 70, while on a trip to a guitar camp in Alaska. I had scored a pretty complete 35mm darkroom outfit for $100 from a gent on the Pop Photo message board, and I have him to thank, whomever you are, for igniting my journey. Anyways, the assignment was to shoot a series of photographs showing a transition, with the theme being "Old". So, a trip to my local Henry's provided me with some Ilford MGIV 5x7 paper, Kodak developing chems, and some Berg sepia toner (of course). I did a setup in my room of some coffee and a cigarette in an ashtray, taking shots every few minutes of the reducing coffee and cigarette. They actually came out OK, the composition wasn't that bad but I didn't pay enough attention to focus and some annoying shadows from the lighting. That, and to really tone well with Ilford paper you need the warmtone version, but I did get a change that was noticeable when the prints were side by side. I think I still have the set, or some of it, sitting in a box in the furnace room.

- Justin

 

[Dietmar Wolf]

Of course I have. I bought my darkroom stuff and started last year ;-)

 

[Drew B.]

I have every negative ever exposed....but I only started in this business in '78.

 

[goros]

I still have it. It was made more or less six years ago. No focusing loupe, no enlarger timer, no thermometer nor developing timer but I still remember when the image appeared on the paper. One day I will scan it and post it somewhere.

Cheers

 

[luvmydogs]

Hah! If that had been my first print I'd be rich and famous by now!! Nicely done. Your definition of 'nervous' and mine aren't even in the same dictionary.

You are too kind! But thank you.

I love reading everyone's stories here.