By Scott Shephard

When I graduated from high school in 1972, my parents surprised me by giving me a Pentax SP500 35mm camera. It came with a very good 50mm f1.4 lens. It replaced a much older camera (Argus C3) and I was in heaven. Portraiture wasn’t my aspiration at the time but occasionally my friends and family were cajoled into posing.

In this case it is my good friend and LHS classmate Scott Peterson who gave me the honor. I can’t tell you much about this photo other than it was taken at the house I grew up in and that I appear to be experimenting with low light. I’m sure the film I was using was Kodak Tri-X Pan and you’re looking at scan of a print I made in my darkroom.

Aside from the technical things, I won’t comment on the quality of this portrait (composition, posing, etc.) But I like it. And I do think it captures Scott’s character and, more importantly, something about our friendship. Scott has been a good friend of mine since at least 1968 and if you do the math, that’s over a half century. Wow!

I have many things in my life to be grateful for but Scott P (aka “Billy”) is one of my greatest blessings.

Honeywell Pentax SP500 Exposure information unknown