SINGAPORE – 12 January 1978

I bought my first SLR camera in Singapore in 1978. I was after an Olympus OM-1, a brilliant manual camera which was smaller than most of the SLRs on the market at the time. So it was perfect to throw in a backpack.

At the time Singapore was supposed to be one of the cheapest places in the world to buy cameras as it had duty free status. Even so, it was hard to beat the prices of New York mail order. I visited lots of camera shops in Singapore and they all had the OM-1 for sale. So I’d pull out a copy of ‘Popular Photography’ and show them the mail order prices at the back of the magazine and ask if they could match the New York prices. They laughed and said if I wanted those prices then I should go to New York. So much for being the cheapest place in the world. I kept asking and eventually found a shop keeper who offered the camera at a price I could afford. I bought a couple lenses and as many rolls of Kodachrome as I could and then headed back to my hostel to read the manual and teach myself how to be a photographer.

I roamed the streets of Singapore, which was still a rather sleepy island nation compared to the ultra-modern city state it is now. I thought I was shooting National Geographic quality images when I looked through the lens but a few months later when the processed Kodachromes arrived I realised it was all a bunch of crap. Kodachrome is unforgiving. Live and learn.

But as I scan my old images I do see a few shots amongst my very first roll of film which suggest I did start to figure out how to set depth of field and exposure on that OM-1. I kept a log of my photos which I still have. My first roll of film was a 20-exposure roll of Kodachrome 64. And the eighth photo I shot on that brand spanking new camera was this construction worker. My notes say I shot it at 1/125 of a second and wide open at f2. One frame was all I shot. Kodachrome was expensive for an unemployed college student so I was frugal with shots.

I can remember pushing the shutter release on nearly every single image I’ve ever taken and I do remember setting up this shot. It was my first ever ‘people’ travel pic. But I can’t remember what I said to this man or how I managed to get such a nice smile. No doubt he wanted a break from his manual labour and found it entertaining to watch a foreigner fiddling with his shiny new camera.