Larry Gold
As best I can recall, my grandpa introduced me to photography when, as a young child, I’d pose for family photos he took with his Kodak No.2A Folding Autographic Brownie. To my child’s mind, his exacting, laborious approach was painfully tedious and due to the gentle ribbing I recall him receiving from adult family members who griped about the poor quality of his photos, I was not drawn to the craft under his tutelage. (Candidly, having inherited most of his photos, I must admit he was no Vivian Maier.)
My own journey taking pictures began between 8th and 9th grade, when my parents gave me a Kodak Instamatic 100 camera for a summer cross-country teen tour. That was the first time I can remember having tried taking “artistic” photos. In succeeding years, due to the cost of film and processing, my photography was limited to only occasional photos of friends and family. In 1976, I took a year off from college and backpacked through Europe with a high school friend. “Upgrading” to an Instamatic Pocket 20 camera, I used it on the trip to record personal memories. (Postcards sufficed for the historical and scenic images.)
In 1980, on winter break from law school, Linda – my then girlfriend and now wife – gave me my first “real” camera, a Yashica FR1 SLR which prompted my interest in photography as a hobby. I remember taking the camera out for the first time and shooting images of trees, birds and railroad tracks. Though I really enjoyed shooting pics, I didn’t set aside much time for the hobby given the demands of work and family. So, on and off for the next 30 years, I used the Yashica and two succeeding Canon SLRs mostly for photographing family, friends and travel.
In 2006, I purchased my first digital camera, an Olympus PL-2 Micro 4/3 point and shoot (with interchangeable lenses) and enjoyed using it for family vacations. When I retired in 2014 and had more time for travel, I finally decided to take up photography as an active pursuit and joined the SSCC (though I can’t remember how I learned of the club). About that same time, I took the plunge for an Olympus OMD-em1 and learned to use Lightroom for post-processing. A couple of years later, I bought an Epson p-800 to do my own printing. Most recently, I’ve used my iphone more and more as my camera of choice.
As a photographer, I believe I have a decent eye for capturing a scene, though I don’t consider myself to be particularly creative. So, as I’ve written on my photo website, www.takomagoldfotos.com, I’m not looking to push artistic boundaries. Rather, “I make images when the subject in my viewfinder is personally interesting, ironic, beautiful, awe-inspiring, poignant and/or humorous… I attempt to create an image that echoes the emotional interest I had for its subject when I pressed the shutter.”
By way of personal background, I was born in New York City, moved to Teaneck NJ when I was 7, attended college in Philadelphia (Penn, 1978) and moved to D.C. for law school (GW Law, 1981). My first legal job was in the General Counsel’s office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Though I was hired by the Carter administration in 1980, by the time I started in 1981, Ronald Reagan had been elected president. So, rather than working for a Democratic administration seeking to expand federal involvement in housing, I spent my time at HUD mostly defending the Reagan administration’s efforts to curtail existing federal programs, a time I regretfully regard as my years of “public disservice.”
In 1986, Linda and I moved from an apartment in Arlington to an old house in Takoma Park where I started tinkering with home improvement projects. (From the time I was a little kid, I had always loved building stuff.) By that time, I had joined a DC law firm as a commercial litigator, though I was not a particularly happy one. When I became a partner, I really knew something was amiss since the thing I was most excited about was looking through catalogs of beautiful wood furniture for my new office.
In 1994, in one of those “if I had my druthers” conversations with Linda, she suggested that perhaps I’d like to teach kids woodworking since I’d always thought about teaching and enjoyed working with my hands. That became the genesis for leaving my career as a lawyer and creating Kidshop. Over the next 7 years, over 20,000 kids between the ages of 4 and 14 came to our commercial kid-sized woodshop to build projects using hand tools. The work was rewarding but the schedule and demands on both of us was a big strain on our family with two young kids and we decided to close.
At the time, I thought I was heading next toward a career as a history teacher. Providentially, however, at the final sale of our remaining equipment, a guy walked into Kidshop to see what was available. He worked for Covenant House Washington (CHW), an organization dedicated to helping homeless and disconnected young adults and was about to launch a new program called “the Artisans” to prepare cohorts of CHW youth for work in the building trades. As we conversed, he threw out the suggestion that I join the Artisans, since the other person he had been creating the program with had recently died unexpectedly. Remarkably, it all clicked, and I spent the next 7 years as the Artisans’ shop manager and teacher in a professional grade shop in D.C.’s Ward 7, working with scores of disadvantaged youth intent on creating a better future for themselves. In 2010, I joined the leadership of CHW as Associate Executive Director.
In retirement, I enjoy a variety of pursuits beyond photography, including woodworking and carpentry, cooking, exercise and travel. And most recently and joyously, Linda and I have become grandparents. We’re incredibly grateful to live just a mile away from Alon and his parents. No question, he’s my new, and most favorite, photo subject!