Q&A with Davis Bunn: Is photography one of your hobbies?

Q: Muriel Ross, the 23-year-old protagonist in The Fragment , is an amateur photographer. Is photography one of your hobbies?

Davis Bunn: When I entered junior high school, I met, by what I now call divine chance, a teacher who supervised the school newspaper. He was a passionate photographer, and had managed to equip a school darkroom.

He chose one student from each class to serve as photographer for that year’s newspaper and yearbook. I had no experience with cameras and did not even know what I was letting myself in for. But for the next two years, I had the joy of working under a quietly passionate artist, and learned to handle myself behind the lens.

The two cameras I worked with were the precise instruments that Muriel handled. The Grafex 3 ¼ x 4 ¼

was for decades the workhorse of professional news photographers and still-artists alike. It was a monster of a machine, weighed over seven pounds, and required a series of steps to operate that at the beginning I never thought I would master.

The negatives had to be put in place by hand, in complete darkness, by feel alone. They were the size from which the camera got its name, 3 ¼ inches wide and 4 ¼  inches tall, that were fitted to either side of a glass plate which was slid into the back of the camera.

Then the protective sleeve was pulled out, the picture was shot, the sleeve put back in, the glass sheet pulled out and flipped over, then the second shot taken.

I carried the camera in a massive wooden case, and a second case that held a dozen glass sleeves.

Added to this was the smaller Leica and a light meter slung from cords around my neck. I looked like a complete and utter geek.

One of the high points of my junior high school career was having a photograph of our team’s center dunking a shot that ran in the local city newspaper.

What about you?

Are there any fellow photography buffs out there? Tell me about your first camera! What inspired your shutterbug love?

Davis Bunn: Junior high photography geek
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THE FRAGMENT by Davis Bunn releases Feb 19!
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