It was 1980, I was recovering from heart surgery, was glued to the house and my darkroom and my passion for photography had jumped to new heights. Each month I couldn’t wait for the next camera club meeting. Every time I saw a medium new to me I had to try it. Nothing took up more of my interest at that time than Macro Photography. I marveled at the blowups of tiny images of flowers, bugs and birds.
One month we had a speaker named John Kohout. He was the curator of the Kane County arboretum. I had traveled to a photography workshop in Holland Michigan on at least three occasions. John explained his theories of lighting, film, focusing, etc more completely than I have ever heard before. He demonstrated an apparatus that attached to the screw hole on the bottom of his camera.
This amazing gizmo had an arm on each side and another arm off of those. They were all moveable and could be held in place by tightening thumb screws. At the end of the arms, on both sides of the camera was a tower. One was about two inches tall and the other, about three inches tall. On each was a low-powered flash. He explained that the difference in height simulated 3 to 1 lighting – mimicking sunlight. He kept his macro at f-22, taped the focusing barrel so it could not move, and focused by moving his head closer or further from his subject.
The process seemed amazing to me. Of course, I wanted one. I could never get enough toys. Kohout explained that he made these flash attachments himself. After our meeting I asked him if I could get one. John immediately invited me to his home and we set a date. He spent an entire morning showing me the ins and outs of the gizmo. He sold me one for $10. That was 26 years ago, and I still worship my toy. I recently added a slave to each tower, enabling the attachment to be used with a digital camera. No more sync cables. The camera’s main flash triggers the other two. The attachment changed my life. Several of my slides have been accepted by salons in Europe and Asia as well as in the USA.
A few weeks later I phoned John to sing praises of his invention. I was told that John had been killed in an auto accident.
1 comments:
I'm glad to hear that you found John Kohout to be as big an inspiration as I did.
His tripod clamp is one of my favorites.
He was the staff photographer for the Morton Arboretum in Lisle,Illinois.
There is a memorial grove for John and Kitty (his wife and another excellent photographer and teacher)
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