When I first started doing photography in third grade my Dad started me out on a completely manual Agfa viewfinder camera. Then when I got into middle school he gave me a Pentax K1000. I was so excited just to have a camera with a light meter inside. It became my main camera for several years, including high school and college. I used this camera during my days as news editor and photographer at my hometown newspaper, The Clay City Times in the early 1990s. I used it so much, I tore the grip off of one side. It had a telephoto lens that came with it, but I mainly used the 1.8 50mm. That was such a sweet little lens! The K1000 itself was a great camera. It was the last American-made camera that was made of metal, not plastic. Professionals who shot Nikons at the time, would keep a K1000 in their trunk as a backup. Those cameras were indestructible. You could drive nails with them.

I recently found a lady in Waco that will do small-run t-shirt orders. So I had her make a t-shirt with a K1000 on the front of it. I love it because it's old school!

-30-

The camera and the shirt.

One of my early mentors was a guy named Bimbo Reed. He taught me a lot when I was in high school. He even had a color darkroom set up in his trailer. He was the one who told me that it was okay to take a vertical picture every now and then, ha! Bimbo took a picture of me with my k1000 on his couch, New Year's Eve 1990. A much skinnier version of myself snapping a few shots at Daytona Beach with my K1000, June 1988.

The Clay City Times, 1991-1994

I kind of laugh at this cheesy picture now, but, let's just say, I took my job as a journalist seriously. My trusted K1000 is beside me, October 1992. I ran several hundred rolls of black and white film through it while I was working in newspapers. It and a police scanner never left my side.