The first time I took a photo I was 5. My mother had an old black and white Kodak camera and I stole it off her bedroom dresser and ran down the beach with it. Were were on holidays up at Currumundi at the time, in an old fibro shack. Four walls, three beds, two couches and one kitchen, if you could call it that. She used to bathe me in the concrete twin tub out the back with a view to the beach, and I felt like the richest kid in the world.
The beach is where it began. I took that camera and I snapped and I snapped and I snapped. I don’t know how I even knew how to operate the damn thing – they’re hardly a point and click number we use today.
I remember getting caught under the jetty, bum in the air as I framed up soldier crabs along the tide line.
My last frame exhausted my mother dragged me home for tea, promising that we’d get the film developed at the store in the morning.
I was up early, dressed and ready to go, and by nine o’clock on the dot we were waiting outside the shop canister in hand. My mother pulled a chocolate sweet out of her bag and slowly sucked on it; something she only allowed herself while on holidays.
“Holidays must always be magical,” she said. “And nothing says magic, like a sweet.”
Finally a man in a white apron matching his hair approached the door and flicked the sign, opening the door and holding it for my mother and me as we made our way to the counter.
A small glass container sat on the counter holding boiled lollies. My mother selected a handful with her right hand as she shoved me forward with her left.
“Billy has some photos he’d like developed Mr. Harper. Tell him Billy.”
Next minute Mr. Harper was taking the canister from my hand and the film from the canister, looking over his glasses at me, inspecting me like he would a strip of negatives.
“You here on holidays, son?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.” I felt my mother’s hand on my back and I straightened my spine, pulling my shirt straight.
“Will you still be here Wednesday? That’s when they’ll be ready.”
It was agony. Three whole days I had to wait to see those magical pictures. But oh it was worth the wait.
My mother made a production out of it. Like we were going to a picture show, but it was my show. She even stood like a ringmaster in the centre of the room calling passers-by to a matinee.
“Roll up! Roll up for the greatest show in the land! Pictures the likes you have never seen,” she said, pacing the room.
“Don’t miss the world first picture exhibit from right here in Currumundi! Roll up! Roll up!” She finished with a flourish.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats.” She ushered me onto the floor.
She pulled the first photo, “Behold the sodden sea grass!”
I’m not sure it even was sea grass, it was so blurry. And the pale colours of the beach all blended together in similar tones of grey. It was hard to make anything out. But she continued like my photos were the best in the land.
They were atrocious, it wouldn’t stop, and no matter how I died a little inside with each passing picture, I laughed more and more as she made a fuss over me.
Until the final picture of the soldier crab.
There it was, in clear black and white close-up, jagged mouth and tiny pincers dark against the pale grains of sand. The weather that day, I remember, was boiling hot, and even that was captured in the rippling background of the photo.
It was my perfect summer photo. The crab was the star. And all of a sudden, I felt like one too.
That was the day, at age five, my photography career began.
“What is that?” I bark at the model draped across the couch.
Her eyes go wide and she clutches at the moth-eaten feather boa, trying in vain to cover her semi-naked body.
“I was trying to look alluring,” she stammered. “You told me to look alluring.”
“You look like a constipated cow,” I reply. “Take a break.”
So I’m no Annie Leibovitz, but I still take photos. My passion got lost along the way somewhere, along with my virginity, keys to my 1972 Holden, and my sanity. Just kidding, I know where my keys are.
I often wonder what my mother would think of my career now. I don’t mind the gorgeous women coming and going (and occasionally staying), but it’s not something you tell your ma, right?
Can you imagine it?
“How was your work today darling?
“Just fine ma. Hugh Hefner booked me for another 3 centrefolds and I banged Miss December in the red room at his mansion. How was your day?”
I miss her every day, but sometimes I’m so damn glad I don’t have to have that conversation with her.
