On Photographers

Home (Tenspeed Hero HQ West) sick with a cold and a torn intercostal muscle. The word torn is preferred because pulled doesn’t sound too bad. Like pulled pork for example; that sounds good. Torn pork does not sound good.

Being surrounded by boxes of photographs and cameras and bags of money (unrelated to today’s theme) got us thinking about how important photography has been in our lives, friendships and Tenspeed Hero. Two Heroes met while attending Humboldt State University (we know what you are thinking but that was not the draw for us).

One Hero was engaged in traditional documentary portraiture a la National Geographic.

The other, newer to the medium, immediately took an experimental approach; cutting his negatives and taping them together, painting on his photographs, etc.

The Holy Grail for us at the time was a mythical, jewel incrusted goblet reportedly used by Jesus at the Last Supper. But the Holy Grail in terms of cameras was the Rolleiflex TLR.Which reminds us that one of the Hero Photographers was briefly obsessed with religious imagery like this one of the Last Supper:

Jonathan Hero was fortunate to make a trade for a Rolleiflex 3.5 f. He traded a ten-minute conversation with the right person at the right time.

The two Heroes in this reminiscence are the oldest Heroes. The other Heroes, many of whom are avid photographers, were busy with other activities at the time: kindergarten, play dates, trying to figure out how to get the f-ing training wheels off of their bikes and in some cases being born.