the journey back to LAAAAS VEGAAAAAS

Last week I worked the Nascar Stewies Award show in Las Vegas at the RIO hotel. It brought back a lot since I spent my early teens in Vegas and it was also the beginning of my passion for photography. I got my first camera at 12 years old after seeing my cousin holding a Pentax k1000 with a huge chunky lens. I had never seen a woman carrying around a camera like that. In the early 80s, you didn't see a lot of women carrying SLR cameras. My mother had a 110 camera that she used quite a lot but nothing of this proportion. I didn't have friends so i spent most of my time alone pensively walking around the desert with my Yashica Fx-3...I had asked (begged) my parents for that Pentax but ended up with a Yashica which is the cheaper entry level brand. One of the happiest moments in my life was when my brother and i sneaked a peek at our christmas gifts a week before christmas. I saw a white and blue box with the Japanese word Yashica. I was so happy and i couldn't believe it. It was very adult gift for a young girl. That was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. From 1984 on i spent years spending my parent's money and any allowances or coins i could find at the bottom of my mom's purse on photo printing. Everything was about photo developing. It was a weekly occurrence. To my mother's dismay, i created hundreds of bleak lifeless photos of the desert and strange rocks...then i moved on to photos of my brothers and their friends. This was my world for many years until after college when i finally broke my shyness problem and met friends of my own. Here are two pics of my first camera and yes it's pretty beat up but sits on the top shelf of my book case. We're talking 29 years old so Yash sits there battered up in retirement.

Thanks to my metaphysical Mama, the poor man's SLR Yashica was one of the most important gifts she could have ever given me in this lifetime.



I had taped an Exposure table to the bottom of my camera to help me with f.stop calculations. Kodak would provide these tables inside the Film box that your cannister of film would come in. Remember those days?


My mother's original 110 Camera. ITT MagicFlash Telephoto Camera