I believe this is the first 35 mm photograph I ever took, using the new Practika camera (from East Germany before the Berlin wall fell), given to me by my parents as my high school graduation present in 1971. I used slide film like my dad (step-father) who had taken pictures all across the country right after working in the photo group in the army overseas in Japan. Previously, I had used only Polaroid and Instamatic cameras.

See my notes below the gallery about each of these pictures.

Took a bunch of 35 mm slides on our family road trip from L.A. to Colorado and back with my mom, step-dad, and best friend Bill in the summer after we graduated from high school at 18 years old.

I had been given my first 35mm camera by my parents as a graduation present and immediately gravitated to framing “art shots,” of which these are a few that turned up in the photo archive I’m currently going through.

Top row – Glass Deer (this may be the very first picture I took with my new camera. Then, Trail Ridge in Rocky Mountain National Park. And finally, “Stark Clouds” as I called it.

Second row – Sunrise (probably in Nevada), “Neon Soldiers” which is hand-held shot of fireworks in Estes Park, Colorado that was a bit jerky on the time exposure and the lights across the lake looked like soldiers under exploding bombardments, and “Neon Revolution” I made by sandwiching two slides together – one of an American flag and the other a copy of Neon Soldiers.

Third row – two shots of a farmhouse under a storm near Denver, and “Man made lighting” – a hand-held shot as we drove down the streets of some major city at night.

Fourth row – “Man mad lightning 2,” then Moraine Park in Colorado (I think my friend Steve Miller may have taken this one – his dad was a ranger in the park each summer and I recall asking for copies of a couple of the slides he showed me while we were staying with them during the trip, and then another sandwich shot of Arlington and the Lincoln Memorial. Now I think that one may be from our 1972 trip that Bill Krasner didn’t come along on. I think the first year was just to Colorado, and the next year was all the way to New York, so it is probably mis-dated in the archive folder.

Fifth row – A shot from Grand Tetons National Monument, another storm shot from just outside of Denver, and a shot of Bill Krasner at the top of Eagle Cliff Mountain above Estes Park, Colorado where someone had fashioned a wooden cross. We were told that every day in the summer there was a thunderstorm over that mountain somewhere between 3 and 4 in the afternoon. And sure enough, we got down again just before it hit, right on schedule.

Final row – An unidentified shot of pines and clouds, and a view of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison in Colorado.