SLIDING into the Seventies Photo Showing

 Last year as the pandemic surged and the world closed down, the hobby saw a resurgence of photo showing. 

It has been amazing to see just how much photo showing has changed from back in the days of long grass, blurry backgrounds, and more.

When I first started photo showing in 1971, my dad, ever supportive of my horsey side, offered to take the photos. He was a photographer with a darkroom in our basement, and so we went downstairs and set up my models on the pool table using old drapes to mask the shoe boxes and background.

I was dismayed and almost in tears, though, when the photos came back - my father had used slide film! (You can see that I actually tried to show a couple of them, but that didn't work very well.)

Dad took the slides down to the camera shop and had them converted into small photos (2 x 3).  Most show photos were 3 x 5, but I was just glad to have the pictures and showed them, small though they were.

Feathers from my parakeet, Buttons, were used to make this regalia for my buckskin Indian Pony. 

Soon I was taking my own photos with my Kodak Instamatic camera.  I liked to go down by the Wabash or into our pastures for more realistic scenes. (See the date in the photo's left margin? July, 1972.)

The concrete cover of our well was a perfect place for photos - or so I thought at the time.

My photos continued to improve as the years passed, but while it is fun to photo show, it is a lot of work and to be competitive, you have to take really good photos.

My photos are just average, although I have had some good wins this past year.

Live showing has recently resumed and NAMHSA is approving shows again. Will the hobby continue on with photo showing now that we can gather again? Or will it fade away with sporadic shows and associations like MEPSA keeping the tradition alive?

I am hoping that this connection to our earliest hobby days continues to thrive.