Wednesday, September 26, 2018

A jaunt down Memory Lane..


























Danny "The Eskimo" Tichonchuk was a nice guy and welcomed me to the San Diego Union and Tribune Photo Lab with helpful hints. 
He encouraged me to "hang in there" when I was hired and assigned to the tiny Wirephoto Room (still going to school) where I could do course reading after I turned the lights back on.

I often would read during the 7-minutes it took for an AP photo to be transmitted then I would turn off the overhead light, flip on the reddish-yellow "safe light," open the machine, take out the newly-exposed photo paper, wrap a new sheet around the drum, close the machine and then process the one just received in the trays of developer and fixer. Then it would wash for 10 minutes or so after I turned the white light on again.

This was time to "hit the books" again before the cycle repeated itself. And it did over and over as I was privileged to be seeing the BEST examples of news-worthy photography. 

When the prints were properly washed, I would drain them and take them down the short hallway to dry them on the glossy dryer so they would have the shiny finish necessary for use in the paper.

We really didn't worry about extended washing for long-lasting archival quality. These were news photos shot by AP professionals from around the world, and were discarded at the end of the day.

The Photo Editor would have seen the facsimile thin paper copy and alert me when he was really interested in a shot.

Sometimes I got a LOT of reading done for school and other times, not so much "white light."

Stan Griffin started a few of us in Wire photo so we could see these professional images and learn a thing or two about how to be a winner with our camera. Stan knew what he was doing!
   
After about 6 months I "graduated" to the large room where multiple prints and enlargements were made for the CNS, Copley News Service, working with Al Sund.

Shortly thereafter, I was paired in a small darkroom with Thane McIntosh and went out on my first assignment as a staff photographer for the San Diego Union and the Evening Tribune.

I started this during my sophomore year then took a break from college for four years to concentrate on being a news photographer. I got married, had two children and DID return to USD for my final two years and got my BA in English/Journalism in 1968. 

Stan encouraged me to complete my education and he and Charlie Sick arranged for me to work weekends and split days off when I went back to school.

I never did make the cover of TIME Magazine but I DID graduate in 1968 so I did a bit of manual cut-and-paste to have me featured.

In 1964, my full page in its sister publication LIFE, was for real.

I had snapped two shots of a sign I saw carved in an apple orchard while flying back from shooting aerials of surfers.

The paper turned it down (?) so I offered it to the national magazine. It was the Miscellany Page and I got a byline...and a $300 check.

After I graduated and had my BA in English and Journalism, I wanted to apply to the paper's Copley Training program and move over to the writing side of newspapering.

Stan Griffin broke the bad news to me.

After so many years as a staff photographer, my pay grade was much higher than the entry level for the writing/reporter slot. To use my newly-received diploma, I would have to take a cut in pay.

Instead, I started looking around and got hired as a Researcher by the CBS Cronkite Morning News. A new direction for my career in news.

Here are some miscellaneous views of me in the 1960s:














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posted by chuckography @ 11:28 AM 0 Comments

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

The Wild Blue Yonder.....

Here's the house I lived in back in the mid-Sixties.

The one with the white roof and the nice enclosed yard.

As seen from the Goodyear blimp.

I leaned out the window and snapped this as we drifted along at about 8 mph.

I wish my son had been playing in the yard.

I would have waved.

But I wasn't sure the wind would carry us over the Balboa Park area in San Diego that morning.

Newspaper staff photographers got to go where many people could not. They still do.

The public (readers) shared the thrill when they read the paper.

I jolted to a sudden stop when I landed aboard the USS Oriskany off San Diego one early morning.

The twin-engine C.O.D plane hit the catch cable with it's tail hook and immediately went to 0 mph.

The Union-Tribune reporter and I had just joined the crew steaming toward home port after their 6-month deployment.

It was my first - and last - carrier landing.

My 3-year old son had missed a chance to wave at the blimp.

But later, at the San Diego Aerospace Museum, he helped me create a feature photo spread as he took an amazing trip.

The name later was changed to Air & Space Museum.

That's another thing newspaper photographers did in the 1960s.

We used our children and friends in feature photo assignments.

They grew up just fine.

(Click on photos to see more detail.)

The Navy shot of the USS Oriskany is from the internet so probably won't enlarge.

It had a serious fire aboard about a year after I landed on its deck.

Many sailors died fighting the flames.

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posted by chuckography @ 11:23 AM 1 Comments

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

"Well, I haven't really READ your blog yet...."

So I get a call from a free-lance writer in New York City who's working on a magazine article about older people using computers.

The editors of a national publication had received my story suggestion and it meshed with their thoughts on doing something about high tech 21st century senior citizens and here we were, talking back and forth on a Monday morning. I was being interviewed.

I told her it was about a year ago that I started my blog. Then I explained that "blog" is short for a web log and I post it on the internet.

"It's like writing a diary," I said, "but many people have the key to open it and read all that you want to include."

She asked what I wrote about and I said I was re-living some of the best years of my life through stories and old pictures. Days as a Marine Corps photographer, college and being a newspaperman in San Diego. The 1960s mainly.

We talked for a while and I asked if she had received all the material I had sent and if she had taken a look at my blog?

She said her computer had crashed over the weekend but she planned to get it up and running and then she would look at the 75 postings I had done since March of 2006. I asked when she had last backed up her files. There was a long silence.

As a helpful senior citizen with a computer, I mentioned that I back up my files about every 2-3 months.

Then I told her I knew how to land the Goodyear blimp in an emergency.

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posted by chucker @ 10:01 PM 2 Comments