Photography was my first love.  At teenager hood that pretty much defined me. School wasn’t all that interesting. Girls weren’t all that accessible, but photography was totally mine.

I set up a small lab in the basement , taught myself how to use it and spent hours there. I was constantly thinking of new procedures I could come up with in the lab and with ideas for pictures. Equipment was quite simple. A modest 35 mm Canon rangefinder (QL).

My Minolta Autocord TLR

I received a big boost when I was around 15 and a friend of ours an American journalist spending time in Israel, was very generous and gave me a Minolta TLR 120mm Camera and a professional Metz flash he was no longer using. That was like an amazing treasure for me. The photographing frenzy just increased.

I went on trips for taking pictures, read photo magazines, new all the available equipment and sent in photos for contests.

At one point my father introduced me to the person who was in charge of the photo lab at the Hebrew University and through that connection I got invited to several exhibitions and seminars given by equipment vendors. This was a huge trip for me. Since I was registered as a professional photographer (don’t know how I swung that) I would skip school once in a while and go to a vendor seminar including fancy lunch and everything.  As a teenager between professionals it was superb!

My father bought an SLR which I totally took over it  was a Konika Autoreflex T This was a great addition to my arsenal but was at one point stolen, to be replaced by an Olympus OM something.

I kept the archive of all prints and negatives in the cellar by the lab. At this point (around age 18) there were thousands of negatives and prints down there. And many many experiments with various types of paper, chemicals and filters.

I left all of that there as a went to the Army for three years.

On day in the middle of my service, my mother tells me that there has been a fire in the cellar when the heating boiler caught fire and exploded. I was away, but could just imagine the damage to the photos. My heart sank. It was a really devastating feeling.

It got worse. I discovered every one of my photos was gone. Wiped out. There were a few, really just a handful, of negatives upstairs but the rest…. Gone. I thought I would never smile.

I tried to reconstruct the lab but it never was really back.

The trauma left me detached from photography for the next 10-15 years. Shooting only once in a while,  while  traveling.

I think I returned to photography full blast with the introduction of digital photography. As a gadget freak and a user interface designer who was occasionally involved in digital photography design projects. I was always up to date on the current equipment and trends.

I find digital photography to be a wonderful form of expression with amazing opportunities at every part of the process.

Besides… It is so much fun.

Here is a collection of a few salvaged photos from my highschool years. Most have fire damage and stains…

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