My life was permanently changed the night I spied the Brownie Holiday camera outfit on display in the window of Barney DiVietti's camera store. The year was 1952. I had just emerged from the Price Theater, where I had watched a movie titled The Iron Mistress. The film starred Alan Ladd as Jim Bowie, namesake of the famous Bowie Knife. According to the storyline, the knife's blade was forged from a meteorite and conferred special powers upon Alan Ladd-who, like me, was somewhat short in stature. How I came to conflate a cheap plastic camera with Jim Bowie's knife is a mystery. Who can fathom the mind of a highly imaginative nine-year-old? The following day I walked into Barney's little shop and asked to see the camera, which came complete with a flash attachment, half a dozen flash bulbs and two rolls of Verichrome Pan film. The price was ten bucks. I had noticed something else in Barney's window: a sign offering "easy terms." I asked Barney if he would let me pay two dollars down and two dollars per month. Barney handed over the camera and made a notation in his ledger. It was the first of many deals we would strike in years to come. My first stabs at taking pictures were a lot less accurate than Alan Ladd's blade work. No matter-with a camera in hand I felt different. I felt empowered. The world as seen through my viewfinder was a world I had some control over. I could impose order upon chaos. By pressing a button, I could stop time. By and by I began to yearn for a camera that wasn't just a piece of plastic crap. I wanted a camera with exposure controls, even though I had no idea just how those controls might work. In a magazine I had read about a 35mm camera called a Kodak Signet 40, which came with an Ektanon lens containing "rare earth" elements. Rare earth elements reminded me again of Jim Bowie's meteorite knife. I decided I just had to have one. Amazingly, Barney had a Signet 40 in stock. The price tag was $74-more money than anyone in my little town had ever paid for a camera and certainly more money than I was likely to amass sweeping floors at the Warren G. Harding elementary school. But Barney insisted I take the camera home. Would five dollars a month be okay? Barney nodded and made a notation in his ledger. My new camera had a top shutter speed of 1/400th of a second. Right away I started taking pictures of moving objects. I became a fixture on the sidelines of sporting events. I didn't need any credentials; by now everyone knew me as an up and coming photojournalist. Thanks to Santa Claus, I added a Mecablitz 100 flashgun to my arsenal. The flashgun enabled me to slice time into fractions as tiny as 1/1000th of a second! But first I had to wait for my moving subjects to come within range. At nighttime football games, this meant trying to figure out which way the next play was headed. I got so adept at reading the quarterback's mind that once he threw a football directly at my head. I ducked the pass but was unable to dodge the intended receiver and a pair of burly defenders. Sports photography taught me the two most important things: where to stand and when to press the button. Before the action takes place, you have to be in position. And when the decisive moment occurs, you must press the shutter button at exactly the right instant. You can't wait until you "see" the moment; you have to "feel" it. A microsecond either way will make all the difference in the world. Later on, after Photoshop is invented, you can delete all the dust and fingerprints. But in this life you only get once shot at the decisive moment. In the mid-Nineteen Fifties, editors at The Salt Lake Tribune began receiving snapshots such as these-of my Springer spaniel Elmer investigating our pet parakeets. Elmer was a bird dog, and it struck me as amusing that he should be pointing to parakeets. I fully expected my picture would win a prize in the Tribune's weekly summertime snapshot contest-but of course it didn't. I was disappointed, but not discouraged. I continued to send in snapshots, and each Sunday morning I would open the Tribune's Home Magazine to see if I had won. I was superstitious; the pages had to be turned just so-like Charlie Bucket unwrapping a Wonka Bar. I repeated the ritual for sixteen Sundays in a row. Still, no golden ticket! The following summer was more of the same until one day-amazingly-I turned a page to discover a picture I had taken of my brother Chuck playing ping pong. Hallelujah! I had won! The five-dollar prize was most welcome, but paled beside the avalanche of praise that heaped upon my head. Carbon County folk did not normally win big city snapshot contests; in fact, until I came along it had never happened. People on the pavement looked up to me-and I imagined they "cursed the bread" as well. The following summer I won again. This time around, the praise wasn't so lavish. People asked: "Do you ever take pictures of anything other than your brother playing ping pong?" So I decided to expand my repertoire, and in the years that followed collected 38 cash prizes from the contest, including an international third place in the black and white division in 1970. The prize was a check from Eastman Kodak for $2,500. Since that day I have never bought another camera on time. - Richard Menzies

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