On this date 40 years ago ( July 28, 1976 ) I had my first ever newspaper photo published including my photo credit with my name under it in the weekly newspaper, The Goldstream Gazette published outside of Victoria, BC.
I had just graduated from high school and was wondering what do with my life, when I ended up newspaper office to see how I could become a photographer. I showed one of the owners, Mike Crossman some of my pictures, he gave me a couple rolls of film ( Tri-X of course ) to go out and find something to photograph.
I made pictures of family and friends with those rolls of film with but eventually Mike gave me a real photo assignment, "Get me something that says summer" he told me, so off I went to locals beaches and parks, to see what I could find, this photo is what I came up with, I think I got it more by luck than recognizing that it would make a cool shot of the guy jumping in the water with his wallet in his back pocket. I do remember walking to Thetis Lake Park and back from the Gazette office in Langford as I had no car.
Maybe not the greatest photograph, but I got my foot in the door. I even got paid, the princely sum of $7.50. As best as I can recollect I made the picture with a 35mm Topcon camera, ( I think it was the Unirex model ) and a 50mm lens. From there I did a few more freelance assignments for the Gazette and even had car crash picture in the Victoria Times-Colonist, about six weeks later I was on staff at the paper, by then I bought myself a Nikon F and two Nikkor lenses, but thats another story.
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