Brownie Points

A good friend and former co-worker from years gone by hinted at taking a few nude shots, mostly in jest, but one day she simply walked in the front door and asked me to get my camera.  As I tell most folks, "I don't do (photograph) people", but when your subject is laying nude in the middle of your living room floor it's rather difficult to say no.

Originally I was going to take a few with a standard digital of the day (2 megapixel was pushing the limit of the technology in those days), but instead opted for a slightly older and decidedly proven technology....a 1932 Kodak Brownie Model 2A with 116 B&W Rollfilm.  The two hardest things to overcome when using vintage box cameras is lining up a shot and getting the subject to hold absolutely still.  Using the viewfinder is next to impossible due to decades of dust and debris that has collected between the lenses, plus the image is inverted.  The f-stop is adjustable (it has a 3-position one that goes down to f/22), but the shutter speed is fixed at roughly 1/40 to 1/50.  She obviously didn't sit still for the first one.

Yet another picture shot with a Brownie.  In this case a 1961 Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash with 620 B&W roll film.  As for the subject matter, this was shot under a cliff next to the Tennessee River on Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, Alabama in the mid-1990s.  She's an old girlfriend of mine and not the one pictured above.