Rainbow Journeyman’s diary

Do you remember your first camera? Of course a lot of the answer that is involved with this question, is age dependent. As some of my friends heard me say, too often, I suspect. I have photographs of me when I was much older. And being in charge of a bus pass in an area where there are seldom any buses, tells a story in itself. But what an incredible area. Natures playground for breathtaking scenery. I digress… back to the story.

In childhood, we had the essential Box Brownie. It had a superb facility for taking landscape and portrait photographs…….. a double prism. This comprised of two minute pieces of bottle glass set on opposing faces near the front of the camera. Landscape meant you turn the camera on its side. And you’ve guessed, portrait gave you the opportunity through manual dexterity of the pinkies to hold the camera upright. Parallax never entered our heads, nor did the fact that the third piece of bottle glass stuffed into the front of the box should have been given the occasional boogie out with a wet piece of cloth. Or emery paper.

In the summer holidays. Unlike most parents nowadays, who would never dare to let their children out of sight, we were barred from coming home until sunset. Indeed, if you did make the mistake of arriving home early. You were found jobs to do, and even today, if you ask any pre-teenage boy, his preferences would not by any quirk of the imagination include jobs.
So, given a few Bob, a pack of crazily cut unbuttered bread, complete with the essential, curly edged, pink spam, and, as a family unit, with my big sister and two older brothers, sans parents, we descended on our local swimming pool. As an additional privilege for this expedition, my parents let us loose with our family heirloom, a decrepit Box Brownie camera, complete with film, in the vague understanding that we would have some summer holiday pictures to show to our seemingly endless parade of ageing Aunts and various Uncles who descended on us when the weather suited them, or someone had died.
The results were museum pieces. We ended up with a series of 2 x 2 grainy pictures with very vague indistinct groups of headless individuals leaning at an angle of 30°, looking as if they were appearing out of a London smog. Oh, I could add one blessing, the camera floated.
This additional previously unknown function of the camera was proved by my brother, when, stepping back to get us all in focus, decided to go for a swim instead. Joined as you can gather by the camera. At least the lens got a clean after all. And the camera was not the worse for its swim.
My next camera given to me by my Aunt Lily was a Polaroid instamatic. I think she won it in a raffle. And my uncle Sid being a skilled photographer, in his own right, decided it should be given away to someone who had no knowledge of cameras, me! It was a subtle choice and cured me of owning a camera for several years. I swear, I still have some of the caustic burns on my fingers to show for my efforts born of trying to peel the backs of those smelly images.
Volunteering and joining the Royal Navy did not change my eventual passion for cameras. Travelling to far-flung places put me into contact with all sorts of exotic and cheap cameras, and I have owned many of them. And lost most.
Whilst in the Persian Gulf, (It was once called that you know) I parted with some hard earned cash and bought a Rolliflex. Known as the look down to look forward camera. This camera travelled with me everywhere and I took some quite notable photographs throughout the Middle East. And, owing to the fact that I only kept contact with my mother every six months… she at least had some pictures to look at. If not of me, she could at least identify the ships cat.
This process worked fine and partially kept the peace until we got back to the historic port of Aden. There we decided to expand our porfolio and pictures from an Eastern place..
My friend, Mike Jones, (a Yorkshire mining lad who had an acquired taste for all that came from hops) and I, were inspecting the inside of a local oasis. Loosely interpreted from the Arabic… it’s a bar. After checking and rechecking the contents of several glasses. We decided to take some photographs for the book.
The “Oasis” was bedecked with coloured flags of several nationalities; probably finger selected carefully by the landlord from the boats in the port at the time. We thought, not wanting to walk too far in the heat that this “Oasis” would make a good starting point for our travel log. Now if any of you knew this area, as was, you’ll know that you are always pestered by guides. Genial little lads who could procure anything for you from a Camel to a Karsy, without so much as a whimper. And show you the Port into the bargain. As we had no need for a Camel, and the Karsy was not on our itinery, it seemed a good idea to ask one of these “guides” to photograph the pair of us in the entrance to the pub.
By slowly, cautiously punctuated, inebriate agreement coupled to lots of pigden English and hand shaking and pointing we asked one of the older boys to take our picture for a bob or two. We showed him how the camera (My beloved Rolliflex) worked and what to press.
He took the camera carefully turning it over to face the lens towards us, grinning as he did so. Then he stepped back several feet, framed us in the viewfinder experimentally, stopped and asked, pointing behind us as he did so “Do you want to include your friend in the picture?” we both looked round searchingly at the curiously empty doorway of the pub behind us, turned back with that stupid question on our lips “Who?” to find the lad had legged it with the camera! Clever lad. He’s probably a multimillionaire by now.

Which is now, why , in later years, we tour the West Country. No, not to get my camera back, but because of the need to take quality pictures. Life’s University is a long
Alma Mater. The knowledge that we began with in that Brownie Box camera grows at each and every turn and we hope sincerely the beautiful images that we produce to inspire you shows that we have learned a little on the way. It’s all at www.rjsw.co.uk.

Mike Tyrrell