I took this photograph while driving my blind father around when I was fourteen. He’d lent me his Canon TLb, the first SLR 35mm camera I’d ever used. He knew how much I loved taking pictures on the simple little (‘toy’) Kodak Instamatic camera I’d gotten for Christmas a year or two prior and having heard about a local photography contest he encouraged me to shoot a roll, the first I’d probably shot on a 35mm. I submitted this picture and won first place and was featured on the local news. It’s not the most marvelous picture but folks, I was only 14 (something I do recall as that’s when I was able to drive on a special learners permit) and<\/em> to be fair this was back in the days of film where one couldn’t take a hundred shots and there was no photo editing software, just one camera, one lens, and one roll of film. I think the composition was good, the subject matter is interesting, and I like the lens flares (something I continue to allow to sneak into my photography). Not too bad for my first roll on a ‘big boy’ camera, eh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Color version:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Black and white version:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I entered my second contest when I was twenty or twenty one while living in Eugene, Oregon. The scan I had for over 30 years was one I likely made around 1996 on an underpowered Mac on a low res scanner in the University of Oregon library and it had to be small enough to fit on an old school floppy disk. Fortunately, I recently found the negatives, blew this up in a dark room, then scanned it. Sometimes you gotta love a hoarding mentality!<\/p>\n\n\n\n For those that are curious here’s the scan I’ve been holding onto for decades:<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’ve only entered two photography contests since I started shooting at about the age of eleven or twelve and there weren’t any prizes except the glory of having my photography featured on a wall or small time local news, but I’m proud of putting myself out there when I was extremely introverted and. Also, winning…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3912","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skabs.tplinkdns.com\/pygmiestudios\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skabs.tplinkdns.com\/pygmiestudios\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skabs.tplinkdns.com\/pygmiestudios\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skabs.tplinkdns.com\/pygmiestudios\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skabs.tplinkdns.com\/pygmiestudios\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3912"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/skabs.tplinkdns.com\/pygmiestudios\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3928,"href":"https:\/\/skabs.tplinkdns.com\/pygmiestudios\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3912\/revisions\/3928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skabs.tplinkdns.com\/pygmiestudios\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/skabs.tplinkdns.com\/pygmiestudios\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/PhotographyContest-Win1-1-5000x3394.jpg\")
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nA love to last and loose<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/skabs.tplinkdns.com\/pygmiestudios\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/PhotoWin2-scaled.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/skabs.tplinkdns.com\/pygmiestudios\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Melissa-1.jpg\")
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