One of my favourite treasures is my father’s cigarette case. Dad was born in 1905. In his early 20’s, as a young school teacher, he was transferred to a one man public school at a little village in western New South Wales called, Moombooldool, thats right, not a typo. All that remains of the place now is an unattended railway station and nothing else.
Dad’s nick name was ‘Lone Wolf’ and when he was transferred back to Sydney in 1933, the Moombooldool towns folk presented him with a cigarette case with a wolf and the date, 1933 encircled by a wreath of wheat, attached to the front and his initials, FC, engraved on the reverse. The case never left his side, it was if it was fused to him. As he was a chain smoker, the case was always full.
Dad’s been dead for nearly 50 years now and I’ve always treasured his cigarette case. For a while I carried it around, it was as if he was close by. Now it sits in pride of place with other momentos of my parent’s lives.
So, here is an image of my treasure showing the face of the case in it’s entirety.
On the technical side, the image was made using a Nikkor 24-70mm lens set at 70mm, aperture f2.8 at 1/25th sec, ISO 100. The camera was tripod mounted as I like to adhere to the rule that the shutter speed should never be lower that the maximum focal length of the lens in use, i.e., for this lense, minimum shutter speed should be 1/70th second at 70mm.
For the close up image of the front and back of the case I changed to a Nikkor 105mm f2.8 Micro lens. This allows me to get the front of the lens extremely close to the subject and in some settings enables the image to be life size, very handy when photographing insects and the like.
On the technical side, for the front, the exposure was 1/5th second at f4.5, ISO 100, tripod mounted.
Here is my image of the wolf and wreath of wheat on the front of the case:
Now for the reverse, This image was made at 1/4th second, aperture f4.2, ISO 100:
Making these images brought back many happy memories and tonight I’ll give the case a loving polish and place it back in its safe haven.
By the way, my apologies for the moire in the last two images. Unavoidable sometimes with my camera body.
Hoo roo for now
CREAKINGBONES 
I love how you combined the photos with such a wonderful story! It’s always so interesting, reading such real life stories. I wonder what a man he was to earn such a nick name.
Perhaps I’ll write a blog about him one day. Glad you liked the images. Hoo roo
That’s a real treasure you got to keep!
Thanks for looking, and no way will I loose track of my treasure.
Bonza treasure photo mate!
Thanks cobber, have’nt heard the word bonza used for years. I’ll start to use it myself now thanks to you. Whacko.
Thanks heaps cobbers, I value your comments. Thanks too for looking.