Donya is in enough of the slide photos to follow to deserve another spot at the head of a
page. (Her previous lead-in was the pic with the dolls in "BOXES 44-45". I wouldn't claim this one is as good as the dolls shot, but it does illustrate what I could shoot indoors without a flash with my new Nikon.) Is it a better photo cropped, as you see above, or with more space around her, as in the original on the right/bottom? You can decide. In any case, my photos in today's post are mostly from Ohio--Christmas in '74 and my sister's graduation from Ohio University in June '75--with an evening at Chicago's stunning Auditorium Theatre in between.
In general I didn't like the cold, glaring light that my camera's flash provided, especially for images of a Christmas tree, so I mostly avoided using it during the holidays, with the unfortunate side effects of a softer focus and a brownish-yellow tint. I liked some of the results, as in this shot of Mom and Ellen:
Speaking of the tree, here it is with and without Donya, and with me and Donya:
Our Warrensville house had a "rec room" downstairs with a pool table. That's Cousin Sue shooting, along with a lineup of Uncle Andy, Sue and me:
And here are a couple of kitchen stovetop photos. In the first, Mom is preparing the Christmas turkey; in the second, a few days later, I'm trying out the electric wok I got for Christmas that year:
And here are two more shots: Donya, no doubt begging for food, and Ellen in a glamour pose:
I did use the flash to take a couple of pictures of Jim and Dottie's son, Jamie, born earlier that year. (That's Cousin Judi holding him.)
And for Mom's birthday, three days after Christmas, I tried taking one photo without flash, one with; that's Aunt Dot on the right:
Finally, here are a couple of 'action' photos in the back yard:
Back in Chicago that winter I see that I took a couple of photos of graduate-student friends. The first is of someone named Terry (whom I lost contact with many years ago); the second is of Wayne Donnelly and Zivile Bilaisis (who later married) as we rode the El down to the Loop to see the Joffrey Ballet at the Auditorium Theatre.
The Auditorium (Adler & Sullivan; opened 1889) is not just one of America's but one of the world's great theaters. (If you look up the Wikipedia article, be sure to scroll down to the paragraph on "Architecture.") I could not do the interior justice without a tripod (and more imagination and time), but here are the efforts I made with my still-new camera. First some wider views of the theatre itself: parts of the sides and the ceiling, plus a view of the stage during the performance:
And here is part of the lobby:
Finally, here are miscellaneous design features and lights.
In this roll of slides I find only one more picture, taken from the roof of my Evanston apartment:
It appears that I was back in Ohio for spring break . . .
. . . and learning by error what not to do when your subject is in shade. My next pictures are from June of that year ('75), when Ellen graduated from Ohio U. and the family drove down to Athens, in the south of the state. Here's the auditorium where commencement was held:
And here's a photo of of us, which would have been a nice picture if it had been in better focus, plus a couple of shots of the graduating class filing in and being seated: 'classic' boring-to-almost-everybody slightly-out-of-focus graduation photos.
But outdoors, after the ceremony, I was able to get much better results. Clearly it was a very windy or gusty day.
Later that summer I was back in Evanston and then again in Ohio, as well as--according to the order of the slide boxes--Montclair, NJ; Manhattan; Nashville; and Columbus, IN, as I'll report in the next post.
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