I am a full-time professional photographer, have been for ages, and whilst I did have one of the ubiquitous Box Brownies that almost every photographer claims to have started with, mine didn't last long.
I pumped petrol, otherwise know as gas, saved just over £21 and proudly marched in Roberto Matassa's camera store in Fort William. I asked Mr. Matassa to order a brand new Zenith E, the one with the built-in light meter.
Have you ever seen an Italian male erupt into a full-blown apoplectic fit?
Well the arms were waving, the head was turning from side to side as the cheeks grew redder and all the while the noise level was rising with a steady steam of invective, some in Italian, some in heavily accented West Coast Scottish :)
The long and short of it all?
Roberto knew my eldest brother, and because of this he would do something "chust for you".
He disappeared below the counter, boxes flew, the occasional grunt was heard as I pondered the pros and cons of doing a runner and just ordering the dam thing by mail. The, by now excited wee man finally came out of the depths declaring "I knew it was there somewhere - this is what you want!"
"No, it's not, it's ugly, it looks ancient and what's that funny looking thing on the front? and I bet it doesn't have a meter in it either light the Russian Zenith has..."
Mr. Matassa would have none of it. This was the camera for me, it not only had a Carl Zeiss lens on it, but he also had a Weston Euromaster IV lightmeter that he would sell me for an extra £16, which I could pay later.
What a camera that was, despite being clunky, ugly and the need to remove the entire back and base to change film, a skill which came in handy when I later started using Leica rangefinders, it was indeed a great camera and one which I truly enjoyed using and one that I learned a lot with. The camera was an Exa500 and the meter was a Weston Euromaster IV. The camera looked really funky, the whole back and base plate had to be removed to load film, maybe that’s why I never had any problem when I switched to Leica rangefinders many years later. The lens was a Carl Zeiss 50mm. I no longer have that camera although I still have the meter in my office, and guess what it still works perfectly.
This is one of my first images shot with that camera, it’s the old railway station in Fort William. (Click for a larger view) A word about Roberto Matassa, he was simply a great photographer, go ahead and google his name + photographer, you’ll find that his landscapes are still in demand and commanding respectable fees. He shot all his work on transparencies, schlepping an 8×10 Linhof camera all over the world. He would always find time to answer my many questions and he certainly taught me a lot. Anyway, off I go to I study photography at Napier College in Edinburgh, Scotland thinking that I’d either be the next David Bailey, Cartier-Bresson or Donald McCullin shooting stuff like this every week;
After finishing at Napier College I spent about fifteen years photographing the insides of eyeballs and that experience taught me a great deal. In short I learned what it meant to be a professional.
Since 1998 I've been photographing weddings, mostly on the East Coast, and although I've photographed from Hawaii to London most of my work has between Philadelphia and New York.
