Camera collection offers picture of the past
By DAVID LOWE Staff Writer

PHOTO BY GABE WOLF Gladden Corbin scans a row of cameras from his collection of more than 200 at his home. Corbin has purchased cameras -- mostly at garage sales -- dating as far back as 1951, when he began photography work at Fort Hood.

Cameras almost never escape Gladden Corbin's eye.

"If there is one, I want one," Corbin said. "I don't guess there's ever a camera I didn't want."

The Lampasan claims nearly 200 cameras, many that date back as far as 1951, when he began work as a photographer at Fort Hood. Some cost less than a dollar or two. Some still function well, while others just sit on a shelf, he said.

All of Corbin's cameras, however, captivate him because of their mechanics and the history they represent.

His work has included photographs for school annuals, livestock shows, weddings, reunions and early Spring Ho festivals. The Lampasan even arranged to shoot photos of Elvis Presley when the singer was stationed at Fort Hood. He tries not to get all shook up about Elvis skipping his appointment.

Although he loves photography, Corbin said he actually prefers the seemingly mundane details -- developing pictures in a darkroom or repairing cameras.

The photographer took football action shots and completed darkroom work out of his home for the Dispatch Record in the late 1970s and early '80s. In just a four-footby eight-foot closet, Corbin learned to love lightening and darkening black and white photos.

"It was very satisfying doing the darkroom work, because you can make it look however you want," he said.

The Lampasan never has stayed away from his darkroom for long -- not even when he could have taken time to recuperate from an operation in 1976.

"When I got home from back surgery there were pictures waiting for me to develop," Corbin said.

He enjoys fixing and assembling cameras even more than taking photos, however. In his downstairs home office, Corbin displays a wooden-view camera he built from a kit when he and Harold Harton began taking photos together for Lampasas school yearbooks.

"He's just good at it," Corbin's wife Marlene said. "He likes to put things together."

Corbin also constructed a homemade copy stand so he could reproduce photos from his home.

The couple now use digital technology as well as manual work to reproduce old prints. Mrs. Corbin copies negatives then darkens faded spots with pencil or ink, and retouches black and white photos with pastels. For many photographs, especially old square pictures she converts to oval-shaped portraits, Mrs. Corbin cuts and pastes on computer programs like Picture It! or Adobe.

Corbin has kept his slides from as far back as 1951, and hopes to transfer the pictures on them to CDs to protect them from deterioration.

Photography and picture restoration have allowed the Corbins to preserve their family history. Often they cooperate, as Mrs. Corbin, a painter, bases a work off photographs her husband has taken. Mrs. Corbin used landscape photos her husband developed to paint a representation of a family dogtrot house in McCreaville that dates back to the late nineteenth century.

In some ways, they consider photographs as good a record of the past as the actual items left behind from previous generations. A black-and-white print of spurs that belonged to Corbin's father and his grandfather's .45-caliber Colt revolver still capture the glimmer of metal.

Just like the heirlooms themselves, photographs remind their owners of family history, Mrs. Corbin said. "It keeps their family together. That's what pictures do."

Corbin's deployment in 1945 to the Philippines, where he worked in the Armed Forces Publications Depot, gave the Lampasan his first significant exposure to photography. The post didn't give him a chance for quick film development, though, as the closest film processor was in Sidney, Australia. Corbin had to mail a roll to San Francisco first, where it was redirected to Sidney.

"It took a couple of months for that film to come back," he said.

The photographer had to be content with what supplies he could find in Manila.

"Cameras and film were just about impossible to find at that time," Corbin said.

In his early years of photography, transporting equipment also posed challenges.

"It was hard to take a lot of photos, because you had to carry film folders for each picture," said Corbin.

When traveling to and from shoots, the photographer grew accustomed to toting a 50-pound box that contained his camera, lenses, flashbulbs and slides.

Even so, Corbin said he preferred working with cameras from the 1950s to the 1970s to digital models available now. While digital cameras offer numerous automatic features, Corbin said he learned from having to adjust settings himself.

"I think you do better pictures" with older cameras, he said. "You had to stop and think about it -- depth of field, shutter speed, aperture."

As technology changed, Corbin enjoyed working with young photographers. The Lampasan advised other artists and even helped photographers set up their own studios while he still was in business. He will never tell a photographer, though, there is an absolute right or wrong way to treat a subject.

"Photography is like painting -- you do it however you want," Corbin said. "Don't ever let somebody tell you that's not the way to do it (or) that's not the right composition. Do whatever looks good."