Have camera, will travel

The first Sepia Saturday prompt for 2017, # 349, shows an itinerant photographer plying his trade outside a restaurant in Columbus Ohio. My father Ian Cruickshank was a scientist, not a photographer by profession, but I think he would probably have listed photography as one of his favourite hobbies, along with gardening. Below are a few examples of photographs showing him with cameras slung around his neck. Of course, someone else must have taken these photographs, and naturally it  would have been my mother Jean who snapped him in the first three shots below.

                    This photograph from 1951, somewhere in New Zealand, is simply labelled

 "Ian and his camera".

Here's another photograph taken by Jean in about 1962, a back view of Ian taking a photograph of the Hampden Bridge in Kangaroo Valley NSW. This wooden suspension bridge was opened in 1898 and still survives. At the time we would have crossed it on our way to or from our annual beach holiday. Ian favoured the slide format, so I don't know how his photograph of the bridge turned out. There are many boxes of his slides that I have yet to sort through.

This third snap shows Ian with camera at the ready, together with my brother, my sister and myself and my maternal grandparents Jack and Mona Morrison, known to us children as Nan and Granddad Morrison. Jean and Ian were showing our NZ visitors the sights of Canberra, the nation's capital, when they visited us there in 1961. The monument in the background is the Australian-American War Memorial, which is a 73 metre high column topped with an 11 metre eagle and sphere, erected in 1954. I don't look terribly excited to be there, but you can see a photograph and read more about it here.

Here are several shots of Ian posing with his camera when he visited Japan for a scientific conference in either the late 1960s or early 1970s. These photos must have been taken either by a professional snapper or perhaps a fellow conference attendee. I must check those slide boxes to see what pictures Ian took there. I'm sure no one visits Japan without a camera!  This model gave many years of good service and I still have it, hidden away in a cupboard somewhere.  I also still have the beautiful kimono-clad Japanese doll that he brought back for me as a trip souvenir.

Here's a photograph taken by Dad of us in December 1964 at the fishing port of Eden on the NSW far south coast, and look who has a camera case around her neck! This may well have contained my first camera.

And finally, here's a photo I took of Mum and my sister Louisa with her camera, posing outside the tent on that same camping trip.

       
     Now for more blogs on this week's prompt photograph, just click here, and make it snappy!