Page 13 - Cape-Camera-January-February-2021

Cape Camera January/February 2021

A member’s profile

Richard Goldschmidt

Photographs above by Richard Goldschmidt

I guess my photographic journey is much the same as all other Whilst still a student at UCT,
club members of my age, starting with a box camera at the age I acquired an enlarger and
of 10 years old and a roll of film that allowed you to take eight invested in the trays and
shots. In my case, those few shots covered two years of holidays necessary chemicals for de-
– and every shot was valuable! Meanwhile my father had the veloping my own pictures.
latest Minolta 35mm with interchangeable lenses and was tak- This meant that I had to
ing colour slides of the family growing up. turn the bathroom in my
I spent much of my life in the Scout Movement and thus learnt parents’ house in Pinelands
the love of hiking, camping and mountain climbing. The exotic into a darkroom. Bulk black
places we went to were calling out to be photographed, and so and white 35mm film was
it was that I was given a Mamiya 35mm SLR for my 21st birth- bought and I loaded it into
day. The Mamiya was constantly in my rucksack in the ensu- canisters in the dark, and
ing student years, until the rough handling, dust and water, got so my journey into black
the better of it. It made the escarpment of the Drakensberg as and white began. My pho-
well as the Fish River Canyon. By then I was earning a salary, and tography was still mainly
my choice for a replacement was a Canon EF SLR with assorted of scouting activities and
lenses, purchased with the help of a friend’s credit card budget many of my black & white
account. photos found their way
In 1975, I took 36 Scouts for six weeks throughout Europe and onto the covers of monthly
on to the World Scout Jamboree in Norway – the new Canon local Scouting magazines.
came with me and I captured the trip on slides. In 1977, it went About this time I also launched out with a Canon Super 8 movie
throughout the UK, Canada and the USA with six of my Scouts camera and produced movies of mainly scouting camps and
when we went to the Canadian Jamboree. Many colour slides activities. Later on and once I was married, this changed to kids
were taken and are still sitting in my cupboard. They were sim- and family holidays. Soon, however, digital cameras came into
ple holiday snaps/record shots – purely because I did not know being and the Sony movie took over the task. So each of my
about the finer points of photography. three children now have a disc of their lives growing up in the
family, a bit like I have my father’s 16mm movie of my growing
up – what the hell do you now do with it? One can only digitize
to a certain degree.

My publishing adventure into producing a Scout newsletter A ‘record shot’ from our family travels

Cape Town Photographic Society 12