From about 6th to 12th grade, I was doing some photography, including developing and printing. My Dad showed me how. We used to drive to Delaware Camera Mart and get supplies. I used his old Exacta SLR. This was about 1973-78. When I showed interest in it, he got himself a new camera and gave me the Exacta. It was an old model that didn't have any light metering in it. I had a separate light meter and had to manually set the shutter speed and aperture. That was supposed to be educational .. LOL. His new camera was fully automatic, which was still kind of a new thing. But all that aside .... I was pretty into it, for a while. I would bring the camera to school in 7th and 8th grade and take pictures of people. I was in the yearbook club and would supply them with these pictures. Now, I think I could find some in the yearbooks (which Mom and Dad held onto for like 40 years). I recall one of a teacher, Mr. Kinnin, talking to some 9th grade girls (who seemed like grown women to me) and them being I think sort of flirtatious. He signed the picture. I was too naive to even understand it that way.
This particular picture was some work to produce. I believe we went to Cozumel or something in January 1978 IIRC. We were at a ruins (Mayan I guess?) and there were these sort of blockheaded gargoyles. It's a common image. So I took a picture of one. I would have stashed the 35mm film and developed it when we got back.
I remember the printing was tricky. The picture actually did not have nice parallel lines, it was skewed as I took it from below. So I found I could unskew it by propping up the easel at some angle, I think in both dimensions. Alas, then it was blurred. I noticed that the lens on the enlarger had f-stops. So I stopped it down, to give more depth of field as it projected the image on the propped up easel. I was able to get it so it was pretty sharp all over and the lines looked nice and parallel. I think there was also some dodging and burning in required as the shadows were dark. So I was proud of this print.
It's in a frame now, has been for decades. When I got motivated to scan it and make this page, I discovered that I don't know how to get it out the frame without damaging the frame. I tried putting it in the scanner, frame and all, but that didn't work well. So I took it outside and took a picture of it with my iPhone. I remember when the web was young, taking prints of pictures of things to computers at work that had scanners (which were big-ticket items then) and getting the files onto floppy disks to carry them back for eventual publishing. This image is small, by modern standards. It would have required splitting and reassembling to move it with floppies - would have needed about 3. Now I take a picture with my globally networked pocket computer/camera etc. and put it in the "cloud".
Actually, there's more to the story. When this all started, Dad got out his darkroom equipment he had stashed, and we made a room into a darkroom. We sat in the dark until our eyes adjusted and marked where light was coming in (it was below a staircase and stuff). And then covered the light holes. Set up the enlarger and everything, buying whatever was needed. So we had film developing cans and printing trays, and a timer, and chemicals - it was quite a project. Possibly the best father-son thing ever for me. So, Thanks, Dad!!!!