By Scott Shephard

A good friend of mine who subscribes to this blog via email, was kidding me recently about the “-A Day-” part of my blog title, given that months have gone by this year without a single post. I threw a little shade back in his direction and said that if he wanted to read one of my posts every day, there are many in the archive just waiting to be opened.

In fact, I was motivated to find out exactly how many there are on file. The answer: Counting today’s post, you could spend the next 2147 days reading one of my posts each day. That’s almost 6 year’s worth. So take that, Scott P! (For what it’s worth, it takes about an hour to compose and publish a blog post so I figure this blog represents about 54 40-hour work weeks. It’s probably best not to know how much time we spend on our hobbies.)

Of course, I’m not telling anyone to go backwards in time in this blog. But if you wanted to, click here and pick a month and year.

None of this has anything to do with today’s photo, which is nothing to write home about but which is a momentous discovery for me. For, you see, aside from being the perfect Scott Shephard selfie in that you can’t see my face, it is also one of my earliest photographs. I found this image a while back when I was going through an old file box of negatives.

The camera the photo was taken with brings back fond memories because it was my first ever camera - an Argus C3, which I had bought used at a Sioux Falls camera store for $16 when I was 14 years old. The C3 was made in the USA and was one of the most popular cameras ever. It was manual everything. But I loved it. The industry’s nickname for the camera was “The Brick” and I used mine off and on for 6 years.

My current camera is lightyears beyond the C3, though it is old by modern standards. Will I end up getting a newer camera? The Canon R5 is calling me. But it costs about 300 times what the C3 cost. That’s a quantum leap that more than raises the eyebrows of my money manager. If I could just make this hobby pay for itself . . . . But of course, money is never the best reason to do anything, is it?

Agus C3 Exposure and film unknown