Full Frame

The home of enthusiastic supporters of Fine Art Photography. We respect its history, admire its present form, and look forward to its future.

Member-only story

Photos of my father

4 min readMar 29, 2025

--

2023, 43 mm (f3.4, 1/150sec, iso6400, image by author)

My father introduced me to photography. He had a silver rangefinder (not a Leica), a tiny tripod, and a mechanical release. Later, he upgraded to a Minolta SLR with the traditional three-lens set. It still works today. He documented everything about our family and collected it in bound albums. Those had cellophane between pages to protect the prints.

His camera had a brown leather half case, which made changing film a pain. I searched for weeks a year ago until I found a similar one for my current mirrorless camera. They are still impractical because now I cannot change the batterie, but feel oh so right.

His latest camera has autofocus and zoom. He is out once a week, and some of his photographs have been exhibited to the public. This was never by a commercial gallery, but companies sponsored annual events for their employees back in the day. He won second prize several times and could take the large framed prints home as a reward. Those now adorn our stairwell and living room.

Since he had all these prints of me as a child, I started to take pictures of him. No more than one or two a year whenever we see each other. Mostly to try out exposures or to finish a role of film.

--

--

Full Frame
Full Frame

Published in Full Frame

The home of enthusiastic supporters of Fine Art Photography. We respect its history, admire its present form, and look forward to its future.

Dirk Dittmer
Dirk Dittmer

Written by Dirk Dittmer

I am a traveling geek. Graduated from Princeton and now a Professor at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. I love photography, cats, and R.

Responses (8)