Showing posts with label "african american history" genealogy "family history" negro camera photography photographs kodak(TM). Show all posts
Showing posts with label "african american history" genealogy "family history" negro camera photography photographs kodak(TM). Show all posts

Thursday, August 14, 2008

How I Got Started in Photography

My grandmother was a photographer. Not by trade, but she had her Kodak and she loved to take pictures. Her Kodak had her named engraved - - in 18 karat gold - - on the front: "Eliza Mae Patten."



My Mom and Her Camera
My mother was a photographer too. Like me, she carried her camera everywhere. I found this picture of Thelma with one of her cameras from her days as a student at Howard University in Washington, D.C. in the 1950s. I was lucky. My parents took me to spend a lot of time with my grandparents on both side. At my grandmother's house in Houston, Texas, I learned my family history while looking through the old photographs of various people long gone. That is one good thing about people who love cameras. A camera makes photographs. By default, a love of cameras creates a love of photographs. Being surrounded by camera people, and their cameras and their photographs, I grew to love it too. Photographs of my family; photographs of my friends; photographs of my friends' families; photographs of people I did not even know and their families; photographs of things around families, like dogs, cats, houses, books, sunsets, etc.

Every Picture Tells a Story
I got my first Kodak Brownie at age 6. Unfortunately, photographs taken by me in my earlier years have not survived. However, my love of cameras and photography did not end. I also developed (pun intended)a yearning for collecting pictures. I wanted my grandmother's pictures. I wanted my grandfather's pictures. I wanted any and all pictures I could get my hands on. The day that I would control my family's pictures, or at least my mother's side of the photographs, has come. I have decided to use this blog as a means to show off my photograph collection and to tell my family history. Since my love of photographs started with my grandmother's pictures, I have decided to start with her and her side of the family first.