[Leica] Not a professional photographer.

[lrzeitlin at aol.com (lrzeitlin at aol.com)]

 George,
I never wanted to be a professional photographer but I became a 
photojournalist by default. My teen aged ambition was to be an astronomer, 
look through telescopes, and discover new planets. When I went to college, I 
majored in astrophysics and took all the courses in optics I could sign up 
for. To earn money, I became a photographic stringer for the Boston Globe 
and, as the editor's joke, I was given the burlesque district beat. Boston 
is a big navy town and burlesque was considered important entertainment. It 
was for me anyway. I was a horny 18 year old and the idea of getting paid 
for taking pictures of strippers was pure heaven. Sally Rand became a friend 
of mine and made it easy to get good photo stories. On the basis of these 
shots, after a year as a part timer, I got put on the payroll and promoted 
to the news department.


Because I was attending classes, I worked the late shift, 4 pm to midnight, 
covering evening stories and the usual fires and shootings. Most of the bad 
stuff happens after dark. After a couple of years of photo grunt work, I was 
promoted to the Sunday photo feature section. This did wonders for my sleep 
schedule. In the news department we used 4x5 Speed Graphics, primarily 
because the films could be developed in 5 minutes and cropped with scissors. 
Film size was important. Some of the staff photographers had their own 35 mm 
cameras but to the best of my knowledge a 35mm picture never appeared in the 
news section of the paper during my tenure. I knew several photographers for 
Life and Look magazines and even they used Rolliflexes. When I moved to the 
Sunday section with its more relaxed deadlines, I used a personally 
purchased Kodak Medalist. This was considered a miniature camera even though 
it took a 6x9 cm negative.


Following college, I did an obligatory stint in the army during the Korean 
war. Because of the degree in physics, I was assigned to the Armored Corps 
(CONARC) at Ft. Knox, Ky. allegedly to do research on tank gunsights. 
Someone discovered that I could take pictures, so I was shipped to Korea to 
photograph armored equipment in combat. My army issued photo kit consisted 
of a Leica IIIf with Signal Corps engraving to prevent my selling it on the 
black market, a 35mm Summaron lens, a 50mm Summitar, a 90mm Wollensack, a 
Weston meter, and an M1 carbine. The next year and a half was spent ducking 
bullets and photographing armored vehicles.


After rotation back to the States, I returned to college for a graduate 
degree, again earning money by working as a photo free lance for the Chicago 
Sun-Times and for UPI. I confess that I was not a very dedicated 
photojournalist and never saw it a permanent career. It was just a way of 
facilitating other objectives and paid me a minimal income while pursuing 
them. In later years I did photo feature stories for travel magazines 
covering India, Norway, and Wales. I never sold a single photo to a stock 
agency. All my newspaper friends convinced me that it was no better than 
being a union scab, A way of stealing work from legitimate photojournalists. 
Now all I do is an occasional story for boating magazines.


Despite my diffidence as a photojournalist, I like photography, both as an 
art and a science. I've been taking picures for over half a century, have 
won my share of awards and witnessed the demise of many film types. 
Unfortunately I never became an astronomer. I was disappointed when I 
learned that telescopes were far too expensive to look through. Besides all 
the planets were discovered anyway.
Larry Z