P3D Re: Demographics

[George Gioumousis <georggms@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Bill C Walton wrote
> 
> Now I know why my 90 year old golfing buddy calls everyone under 70
> "Sonny".  I don't believe I am the oldest member of P3D, but maybe some
> of the other Senior Experienced Stereographers (SES) don't want to admit
> their age/whatever.  
> 
> I will be 68 in February, which of course does not come close to the
> "Godfather of Stereo" Paul Wing.  At 85 I think he is one of the oldest
> active SESs.  I know that Dr Markley, in the SSA Alfa Transparency folio,
> is older than Paul, but I don't think his stereo activities can compare
> to Paul's.
>
Bill is a little young; I will be 70 in March.
> 
> My first stereo experience was with a box of beat up, scratched Keystone
> stereo cards and a very dilapidated stereoscope that was in the county
> Library in Clarksville Arkansas when I  was a young boy.  I spent many
> afternoons viewing those cards and taking "trips" all over the world.
> 
I'm not sure which of two was my first stereo experience. Probably a 
polarized movie at the 1940 World's Fair in NY. [I also saw my first TV 
then; I was not impressed.] The next was in grade school, a box of stereo
cards and a Holmes viewer. I was fascinated but no one else seemed to care.

I had my first darkroom when I was 20, after 3 years of chemistry in 
high school and 2 years as a chemistry major in college. I knew enough
organic chemistry to have fun experimenting with some weird potions,
and I took on a hobby of photographing all the bridges in the NY area.

Then followed graduate school, marriage, children, a Rolleiflex, a job
as a chemist for an oil company, and a job as a physicist for a defense
contractor. I saw "House of Wax" sometime before getting married, and 
read about stereo cameras, but felt too poor to get a Realist, even
though I found one used for about $30 in 1966. I borrowed a friend's
Kindar in 1971, and found a used Wirgin for $7.50  a couple of years 
later. Two viewers turned up pretty soon, and I used more film in the 
Wirgin than in the SLR I had also gotten. A friend told me of a camera
club with a stereo section, so I was pretty active for a while.

It wasn't then that I lost interest in photography, but rather my wife 
and I developed other interests. There were several political campaigns,
there were trips in the Sierra with our children, there was organic 
gardening, I started teaching computer science courses part time in
the evening, and I started going to science fiction conventions.

By this time all our children were grown and had left (except for one
who returned while going back to school for a second time). Someone
told me about this group, and I was hooked all over again. I considered
retiring and building a darkroom in the garage, but I got a chance to
teach a couple of classes at University level, so retirement seems to
be off for a while.

I expect I'll be spending a lot of film on little kid pictures, now that 
we just got a grandchild. Then I built a very simple and inexpensive slide
bar (by using some sophisticated design tools) and, since I have macro
capability in both my SLR's, I'm planning to specialize in macro shots
of native wildflowers.

We are planning to attend the NSA convention in Green Bay next year. Seems
next year will be our 45th wedding anniversary, and our honeymoon was a 
bicycle trip starting from Green Bay, but I have never had a chance to go
back. And this time I'll take a camera or two along.

                           Stereo                Stereo
George Gioumousis           /---\        |       /---\ 
                             o o         |       o o  
georggms@xxxxxxxxxx           |          |         |   
(650) 494-6276              \===/        |       \===/ 
                        Photographer          Photographer


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