All my life, my father, Daryl Reeder, documented the celebrations of our family's life - the touchstones and benchmarks - he was always with a camera. Through those early years, I never realized how much meaning was in his work as a photographer, how much dedication and love, until I reflected on my career as a photojournalist and became curious about the origin of my own photographic vision.
Certainly I knew Dad had influenced me, but it wasn't until I stumbled across a forgotten metal case housing dozens of Kodachrome slides that it hit home, truly home, just how much. As I looked at each image, still vibrant after more than five decades, I was awe struck by the beauty, the history, and the documentary quality of the photographs.And as one considers these images were shot in an era without auto-exposure, auto-focus, and impossibly slow film speeds, they take on even more significance. To me, they're stunning - easily magazine quality from that era - but fated to be eclipsed by dutiful family portraits, birthdays and graduations.My dad shot these pictures with a Voigtlander camera - one of the finest made, and the images that follow are his photographs taken when he was in the U.S. Navy - some are aboard his ship, others are from Hong Kong, and 1950's Korea during the war. They represent my favorites found in that forgotten, battleship gray case, although perhaps not the same selection Dad would have chosen.These pictures never made it onto our living room wall in our family slide shows, but I was thrilled to find them after all these years, and felt it was important to see them now, to recognize the photographer who is also my dad.So I'm making the 10-hour drive to WaKeeney, Kansas - the middle of nowhere - this weekend to surprise him on his 80th birthday, packed with CDs loaded with digital files converted from the original Kodachromes, 5 custom framed prints of his photography and an iPhoto book with 25 images dedicated to his early photography.For me, it's an inheritance of riches.