It is spring-cleaning time in our motor home. We live on a knife-edge, attempting to balance our weight/capacity ratio (we have a carrying capacity of just over 1,500 pounds after we fill our tanks), so our minimalist lifestyle constantly needs monitoring. Like all earthlings we tend to pick up the stuff of life (books, cards, new equipment, Jo's paintings, clothing). So the weight is always exceeding capacity.I thought you might get a chuckle about some notes I uncovered. They'd been passed along by my brother, Bill, when we visited with him outside London in 2007. He'd found them while closing out my family's home in Scotland after our dad died in the 1990s. They were notes written by my first employer, a photographer, back in 1955.
Wilson Groat's initial apprenticeship agreement (I had just turned 15 at the time) noted that he would start my pay at 20 shillings per week. That's one pound per week. Currently, a pound is worth $1.46. It was worth a little more back then - around $2.40, as I recall).
Mr. Groat took pains to inform my parents that this payment was quite a bit in excess of what the Institute of British Photographers required that he pay me. He did warn he would deduct from my pay should I waste materials in the course of my duties, however.
Sept. 1, 1955
" Development of films: Good. Contact printing: Very erratic, sometimes quite good, other times poor. Proportion of wastage of paper very bad this week.
"Dealing with customers: Quite good, but Robert is apt to become flustered on occasions. He almost gave one customer 10 shillings too much change yesterday.
"Punctuality: Robert's punctuality is excellent.
"General: Robert is not nearly meticulous enough. He makes mistakes and turns out bad work due to non-attention to details. He has not made a success of the developing and printing for the amateur side of the business which was allotted to him in an effort to increase his sense of responsibility and sense of order. Apart from the technical side, he has made glaring mistakes in the straightforward sorting of prints, etc. He seems incapable at time of remembering what he has been told.
"On the credit side, his appearance is always smart, and he is very obliging. He has a pleasant nature, which goes a long way in permitting his superiors (that would be Mr. Groat) to overlook his mistakes. He requires constant supervision at the moment (three months on the job) but I feel we shall see a great improvement shortly.
"To ensure an improvement, Robert will be subject to the strictest possible supervision in all he does, no matter how trivial, and will not be permitted to work on his own again until we are quite confident he can cope."
I do remember working in the darkroom developing roll after roll of film. Wilson Groat found the cheapest way to process the film was to fill a clay pipe with developer. I would clip the rolls of film to rods and hang them in the pipe, agitating when necessary. The damned film often would slip off the clips and end up at the bottom of the tank. As a result, I'd have to fish for the escaped film with a long rod, dragging the film up the side of the tank. You can imagine the quality of the negatives when they would be printed after this scraping exercise.
Mr. Groat submitted a second report six-months into the apprenticeship. I was still being praised for punctuality and turnout.
"General: A gradual improvement is noted, and steady, if somewhat belated, progress is now being made. An improvement in Robert's sense of responsibility is also obvious.
"In an effort to give him some encouragement, his pay was recently raised. This award is not to be considered as an award for merit, and indeed, will be withdrawn if satisfactory progress does not continue. He is still substantially exceeding the margin of wastage of materials permitted, and his increase in pay means he will be open to make good this wastage to a greater extent than previously. Invariably, such wastage is caused through neglect of commonsense working arrangements which by now should be second nature to him.
"I feel if we are absolutely rigorous in the matter of debiting him for his misdemeanours of this nature, the inmportance of clean and tidy workmanship to the job in hand will be brought home to him."
I stayed with Wilson Groat for a year, and he promoted me to being his sidekick photographer for weddings. While he shot with the plate camera, my job was to shoot with a lovely little Leica 35mm camera. I would capture "the moment", the casual shot, the experimental and the creative stuff. Then I'd have to develop and print it.
I left him after a year for the siren song of journalism. I was employed for 30 shillings a week at The Daily Herald in Edinburgh. My principal task there was to brew 20 cups each of tea per day for the chief (and only) reporter and the circulation manager.
The picture at the top of this blog, by the way, was shot of me at age 18. By that time, I had moved on to The Scotsman, the national newspaper of Scotland. Reporters and lesser mortals like me would take off on weekends to climb Scotland's mountains. This was a winter climb of Ben Cruachan on the western edge of Scotland.
