| So many stories .... soooo little time!
Thanks All! I've never really thought anyone really cared much about all that stuff! At any rate, I'll try to post a little here and there and cover as much ground as possible.
IF I can locate all the slides, negs, and pictures I've got, I'll post some here at a later date. After moving a dozen or more times over the years, I've got all that stuff stashed away somewhere and can't remember where ...... "Old age is hell and don't get no better".
I guess the place to start is that we were VERY well trained in the basics of photography .... composition, lighting, exposure, mechanics, contrast .... all of it! And, for what it's worth, the US Marine Corps photographers were trained at the same facility and in the same classes with us Army guys. In fact, about 75% of my platoon at photo school were Marines.
The hardest part was trying to protect all the gear and film. With the damned incessant monsoon rains, high humidy year round and high temperatures, it was very difficult to keep things in good shape. If it wasn't the rain, then we'd be making a river or creek crossing in water chest deep. Days on end with little or no sleep, not enough water or food and that's just for starters.
We mostly shot 35mm in the field. When I arrived in Sept 66' they'd just started issuing brand new PENTAX Spotmatics with a full kit of lenses, flash, etc. Most of us carried at least two and sometimes 3 or 4 cameras. I got lucky and was issued a NEW Leica M3 with a full compliment of lenses and everything else. I've shot Pentax, Nikon, Canon and everything else; and for 35mm Leica has then all beat. Hell, even the Nikon/Canon shooters were impressed with the sharpness of those Summicron/Summilux lenses.
For the most part, we shot Tri-X film for B/W and Ektachrome for color workl
Everything we used was "old school".... no auto exposure, autofocus, no auto-anything. You were expected to know your job and perform it.
We mostly shot "photojournalism" type work. The vast majority of it was released to various news agencies for general publication. I got a lot of "special assignments" from Dept. of the Army, Pentagon, "unamed" ABC agencies to name a few. This was primarily because I was one of the few who had a security clearance high enough to do those missions.
During our "down time" we'd sit around sucking on beer cans, and talking about "THE SHOT".... the one we'd all get eventually! The other thing we'd do is practice focusing QUICKLY (remember no autofocus). It's amazing how quickly you can focus and frame a shot it you practice at it. The other thing is most of us shot with a 35mm or 28mm wide angle lens as this reduced the problem of out of focus shots. Our normal procedure would be to set the lens at the hyperfocal distance, then all we had to do was keep shooting. This was particularly important when we were under fire as you don't have a lot of time to "putz" around with the shot.
Back to our gear. As I said, it was really hard to keep everything dry and operational and clean. I remember one poor fool who went on a mission after just receiving his brand new Spotamatic. Two days into the mission and his telephoto lens rolled out the open door of a Huey and falls into a rice paddi. Two days later and the damned thing had HUGE globs of fungus growing between the lens elements. Needless to say, the 1st Shirt was not happy.
More later, but thanks to you all for your interest. To me, even 40 odd years later, it was a job.
Bob Hillerby
Combat Photographer
B 1/9th Cav, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile)
Republic of Vietnam 1966-1967
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And thanks for your service during Vietnam.
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