I almost forgot, it being the better part of a decade since this site went up, that I once printed a photo by Ansel Adams.

In the early part of 1979, having dropped out of graduate school in Tucson after one semester, that I had a go at Plan B by opening a custom photo lab, with a storefront and a listing in the Yellow Pages, which I'd have for about the next 18 months.

In the late-Spring of 1980 the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona (in Tucson) had some sort of special event, which I recall as having been the opening of a new facility, though I can find no record or mention of this. Ansel Adams, then closing in on age 80 several years before his death, was the keynote speaker, having been a co-founder of the Center five years earlier, where an archive of his work, including all his negatives, is located.

In spite of the business I was in I knew nothing of the Center until this kid came into the business one day. I say "kid" but he struck me as being about a college freshman, or just very young-looking if he was a little older. He'd been in the audience and had taken a camera with him, a regular 35mm SLR film camera, a common standard camera at the time for someone above the snapshot, Instamatic level.

After the formal stuff was finished I guess Ansel was milling around conversing with some of the attendees, and this kid, when he got his turn, asked if he could take Ansel's picture. Ansel turned the tables on him and said "Why don't I take a picture of you?".

So that was the photo brought in for me to enlarge and print. As I recall it was a color slide, not a negative. Just a picture of this fellow, but decently composed, though nothing really very exceptional. I can't recall whether he wanted just a 5x7 or an 8x10 but it wasn't a big or difficult enlargement. If I'm correct about it being a slide it would have been printed on Kodak Ektachrome 2203 paper, which I used a lot; it replaced and was better than the earlier 1993 Ektachrome paper. Processing was in a light-tight drum, where the paper was loosely held against the inside of the drum so that when it was rolled back and forth it only took about 2 ounces of chemicals to immerse and coat the paper.