Pierre Trudeau 1968

Pierre Trudeau 1968

'SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER' location shoot 1977

John Travolta on set 1977

   Photojournalism

Being in the right place
             +
at the right time
             +
with a camera
             +
knowing how to tell a story =

... Basic Arithmetic of Photojournalism





Starting with a Kodak Hawkeye at 8 years of age, Godfrey Jordan got the shutterbug itch early. He bought his first 35mm camera, an Argus C-3 rangefinder, at 13 with the earnings from a part-time job. At the camera department of the local Woolco store, he regularly traded in & up to a variety of SLR's and even a square format Ricohflex for his basic training.

The high school camera club provided opportunities for learning darkroom techniques such as rolling bulk stock into canisters, developing film, then printing/enlarging photos for the school newspaper and yearbook - sometimes all within 2 hours. A boot camp for young photographers, a great place to be, and there were no academic credits involved - you just did it for the fun.

Scores of film rolls later, the Summer of 1969 came around.

Luck (a definition): "when preparation meets opportunity"
- eg. The Classic Rock Photographs and Jimi Hendrix Gallery.

Encounters included Pierre Trudeau's campaign in 1968; on set in Brooklyn for the filming of "Saturday Night Fever;" cycle races;

Since that time, Godfrey's photo work has provided background research for his writing projects: the NASA space shuttle program, Halley's Comet observations in New Zealand, baseball's spring training rituals in Florida, the joys and ironies of everyday life everywhere.

He continued to use his Minolta 35mm - as a purist, shooting film and printing from negatives in the darkroom... until Kodak went electric, the chemicals  for darkrooms were too scarce, and....well, digital is so darned simple.

Big regret:  if only there were unlimited amounts of film frames to shoot back in the day, some of those opportunities missed for rationing out frames by frame would have yielded so much more!