I recently had the good fortune of spending some minutes with Bellamy Hunt, aka Mr. Japan Camera Hunter (JCH, @japancamerahunter). We got to talking about cameras, lenses and related topics. One subject was the backstory of the Minolta XG-1 which he inherited from his father.  I later learned that he had been seeking father-son camera stories for his JCH website. I have one to share, on today, my father's birthday.

My first memories of photography were that cameras were  costly and somewhat fragile. I learned that because at the age of six, I spilled a sweet drink on my father's Contax IIIa. He was not pleased. He had to send it off to Germany for a cleaning. Cameras were then off limits for what seemed a very long time to my curious young brain.

Dad allowed me to use his camera again a few years later. I would have been about 12. I learned how to operate that same cleaned Contax, sunny 16, with the exposure chart from the film box. All the basics- exposure triangle, depth of field, shoot with the light source behind you, etc.

Why was I given a second chance? He was forgiving and wanted me to have another try. Practically, he had acquired a Pentax ME. He aspired to better gear; there was always a camera magazine lying around his office. After demonstrating responsibility with the Contax, I was occasionally allowed to use his ME. It felt so luxurious with aperture priority and a functioning light meter. I didn't think about photography too much when a camera was not in my hands - there were too many more interesting things as I moved into adolescence.

Dad shot a lot of landscapes, cities, some street, and the aforementioned friends /family work. Growing up, a couple of his framed enlargements graced our walls; black and white night photos from bachelor days in Montreal. In the basement there were others I discovered as a teenager. Chicago. New York. Exotic, urbane settings compared to our small suburban city in northern Ontario. I remember carousel slideshows and how popular slide film was in those days. Later, from scanned negatives I gleaned that he had been in New York at the time of the NAACP convention in 1959. Much of his early photos were with the Contax. Thinking back, the black and white aesthetic was imprinted into my brain as one way of seeing the world. I grew up in monochrome. Newspapers. Even our first television stations were in black and white.

At some point in my late teens we made a trip to Church Street for my first camera. With his guidance, I bought a used Zeiss Planar 50mm f 1.4 C/Y mount, at a pawn shop.  Then around the corner for a new Yashica FX-3 Super 2000 body at Henry's. The lessons here were clear: buy good glass, buy used if you can, think less about the body. It was a great setup that lasted me a decade or more. We made multiple trips to camera shops over the years. Sometimes afterwards we would get a coffee down the street at b Espresso Bar. He made serial upgrades. The Pentax ME became an LX. The LX was traded for a digital SLR, the K-7. I enjoyed those times with him, and witnessed how he interacted with the salespeople. He was courteous, sought value, negotiated well, and exercised restraint.

Dad continued shooting after I left home to study and work. He would visually share the latest trip, encounter with family, garden yield, or construction project. As prints or email attachments. He embraced digital and grew to love compact digital cameras. He saw his daughter grow up to become a successful artist. Time was invested in painting during his retirement.

I fell away from photography for a time but did come back to it when my son was born. I became the chronicler of my own family, as my father had done for us. I made sure my kids had early exposure to photography. When my son lost his first digicam during a middle school class trip, I was both annoyed and amused. The parallel to my own gaffe was striking – I remembered what Dad did for me and tried to make it a positive learning experience for my boy. Then cell phones came and he always had a camera.

Photography helped me survive my divorce - it got me outdoors, walking, and outside of my own head. I retraced some of Dad’s steps to repeat some photos he made in Montreal and New York, and made some “modern” variations. I am beginning to understand a few things about myself: why Ansel Adams, Daido Moriyama and others have resonated with me; why I'm interested in psychogeography; why I got into medium format and pinhole photography; and why I know the artist Yudai Ninomiya - @yudai_ninomiya_. Through photographic experience, I saw my father chronicle our family, friends and the outdoors. He taught me lessons for life, sometimes through my mistakes. He supported me in a progression of competence, with related freedoms and duties. I am thankful for such exposures. So many gifts.

Dad is gone, but also he is not. I keep the Contax IIIa and his Canon G9 where I can see them in the living room. They are now shelf queens. Neither work well, but of the two, the Contax can still shoot a frame, even with its broken garage door shutter. I learned it would  cost more to fix it than to buy another. The G9 is a brick. They are talismans of a sort - transitional objects containing some of his spirit and luck. Reminders of him, to be less dramatic. I framed and hung several of his original enlargements. Decades passing like the Shinkansen. Mom has also passed away now. Though I can't see them smile or hear them speak, the photos make them feel a bit closer.