Reminiscing, part 2

I’m still peeking at my old photos when I should be labeling their storage boxes. I can’t help reminiscing when I do. (You can read Part 1 here.)

I see old photos of an entrepreneurial boy trying to earn quarters. Quarters were important pieces of silver to us kids because we could buy a long-neck bottle of our favorite soft drink, a candy bar, and a comic book with each. My first job that earned me quarters was selling the Grit newspaper on weekends. I was 9. During that time, I sold greeting cards for a company that advertised on the back pages of my favorite comic books. I made enough money to buy a bicycle and a pair of roller skates. I used the bike to help me deliver newspapers faster. I shared the skates and several comic books with my unemployed younger brothers.

My earnings also allowed me to buy some colored pencils and drawing paper. With them, I made my own greeting cards—Merry Christmas, Happy Easter, Get Well Soon, etc.—and gave them out for free to my newspaper customers. Years later, I met one of my customers who had kept some of my cards and framed them. They hung on her living room walls.

Even later, when I became an adult and began my career as an artist, I gave away a lot of my art as gifts. An acquaintance told me it wasn’t a good business venture, and wanted to know how I thought giving away my art could be profitable. For me, being an artist isn’t always about making money. My profits were the smiles on people’s faces when I give them my art as gifts.

When I was learning to paint realistic looking animals and landscapes, I gave away my early attempts to anyone who wanted them. One was a deer painting (“Road Traveler,” shown below) that I gave to my younger brother in 1985. His friends saw it and word got around that I was a wildlife artist. They and their friends became some of my frequent customers.

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Not profitable giving away art? I suppose it’s how you define the word.

Sometimes those giveaways were advertisements that led to commissions. For example, I did a pastel drawing of a whitetail buck in January 1988 for a birthday gift.

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A local dentist who was an avid hunter saw my drawing and commissioned me to do another buck portrait, painted in oils this time.

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Other photos I’ve peeked at this week are local wildlife studies from the 1980s and 90s and the time I went through fifty rolls of black and white film and shot all sorts of scenery at night. Below are three of my most favorite photos of those times.

The red-tailed Hawk is one of my first honest-to-goodness wildlife photos that turned out decent. I didn’t use a blind but lowered myself to my stomach and kept very still in the grass.

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I shot the pair of black and white night photos downtown (shown below), just blocks from where I live. The statue in front of the church was very spiritual and moving at the time, which prompted me to shoot upward for dramatic effect.

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The street scene is a time-lapse photo taken at a traffic light and railroad crossing. Some of my friends called this shot “Passing Through.” I used that as its title at an art and photography show and it stuck.

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That’s all for now. I really need to label my storage boxes and check it off my To Do list.

Thanks for reading.

Peace and love to all my readers.

Steve, 2/15/2023

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This post “Reminiscing, part 2” copyright © 2023 Steven Leo Campbell at stevecampbellcreations.com – All rights reserved.

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