On Sunday the Alva Public Schools ran a brief legal notice stating they’re taking bids on school pictures for next year. Specifications may be picked up at the administration office at 418 Flynn. The notice was in the Alva Review-Courier.

I’m not sure how many years my husband was the school photographer, but it was approaching 50. Before that, the schools used one of the large school photography businesses active in the state. It took a lot of lobbying on Lynn’s part to convince the school board and administration to open school pictures to bids.

When Lynn received his cancer diagnosis, our granddaughter Kat and her family were already packing to move to Alva. We expected to employ her husband, Trey Lunn, in other areas. By the time they arrived, we needed Trey for sports. Lynn also spent some time training Kat and Trey in school photography. He had very exacting standards on setting up backgrounds and lighting, especially once he began using a green screen to provide background choices.

When Lynn started, school pictures were scheduled once a year with a few other dates to take group photos for the yearbook. Over the years, the process evolved as he added spring outdoor photos and the opportunity to buy elementary classroom groups.

Compiling lists of picture packages and payments, putting them together to order from the photo lab, getting pictures back to the correct schools, etc., took a lot of extra time and effort by employees. Over those years, I learned to tiptoe around Lynn during school picture seasons as he was under a lot of stress to get everything done in a timely manner.

At the end of 2019, Trey took a new job at the Atwood store in Enid. He planned to take off to do the spring school photos, but those were canceled when schools closed following spring break. We decided it was time to let someone else handle the school pictures next year.

I hope the Alva schools can find someone local who has the equipment and knowledge for school pictures. If there’s a problem with a photo order, it’s certainly a lot easier to deal with someone local than trying to contact a larger company.

Photography Experiences

My brother Gene and I were texting about cameras last weekend. I’m not sure if he was looking online, in a book or in a catalog. He was impressed with a Hasselblad without a lens for $48,000. He found another camera like the one he used in the army. That one included a flash attachment that used flashbulbs.

Gene learned a lot about photography taking pictures for our parents’ weekly newspaper. He was also the main darkroom tech, developing film and making prints. After high school, he enlisted in the army listing a preference for photography. He was assigned to the Signal Corps and received further training before going to Korea.

As we texted about cameras, I realized he could probably tie a different camera model to each phase of his lifetime.

While he was still at home, Gene decided to teach me and our younger brother Tom how to use a camera. I was probably about 10 or 11 and Tom was a couple of years younger. It was all black and white film in those days.

Cameras had manual settings so you had to learn to “read” the conditions of light and speed. A light meter was a very useful tool. It was a complicated process. The safest method was to take a series of the same photo at different settings, an impossible task during a high speed basketball game. You also had to manually advance the film after every shot.

Gene gave me one lesson, and I failed badly. I didn’t understand about parallax. The camera viewfinder through which you looked to frame the photo was positioned above the camera lens. So what you saw was higher than the actual picture taken. Tom posed for the picture, and I cut off most of his head! I was already a reluctant student, and that completely ended my interest.

My next try with a camera was after Lynn and I were married. He was doing a radio remote broadcast in front of a downtown store. I stopped by to visit, and he asked me to watch the equipment while he took a quick break. He’d just given away a prize on the air and said the winner might come by. I needed to hold the winner there so Lynn could take a publicity photo.

As luck would have it, the winner arrived for his prize before Lynn’s return. He didn’t want to wait and insisted I take his picture. I remembered hearing Lynn talk about the f/16 rule aka the Sunny 16 Rule. On a sunny day, set the camera aperture to f/16 and the speed to the reciprocal of the film ISO number. I used that, allowed for parallax and managed to get a decent photo. Maybe I could master this after all!

A few months after Lynn and I were married, he photographed his first wedding using color film. Then the “point and shoot” cameras started appearing. Sensors would automatically set the camera for the photographer. Most of the time, the automatic settings worked.

After taking me along to assist at weddings, Lynn talked me into photographing some on my own. I avoided that as much as possible, but he hated to turn down opportunities. Probably my most memorable wedding was one at Waynoka. I came down with a very bad case of flu the night before the wedding. Lynn called the bride who agreed to chance my spreading the flu rather than giving up photo coverage.

A helper went along, driving the car and rounding up people needed for photos. I spent a lot of time sitting and stayed as far from people as possible. If anyone came down with the flu from my presence, I never learned of it, but I never want to repeat that experience!

A couple of times, Lynn gave me cameras as gifts, hoping to encourage my interest in photography. These were generally cameras he’d like to own for himself. I finally convinced him I’d prefer one of the more automatic versions. He was disappointed as this took away his justification for buying a new camera he wanted but really didn’t need.