The past is a new project

Somewhere in your house I'll bet there is a box of photos, maybe several boxes. Not you, mom, I know you've cleaned out all but a few favourites during your last move. But the rest of you, yeah. Maybe there's a photo album or two, but unless you're really organized, that's it.

It worked like this for us. We had an inexpensive point and shoot, and usually forgot to take it places. When we remembered, I took most of the photos, on the theory that if I was holding the camera it couldn't be used to take photos of me. Eventually we'd reach the end of the roll, and typically we took it to Black's because they had a store in a mall near us, and near our local library. It was common to pick up or drop off books and photos on the same trip.

Do you remember what that was like? We'd get the envelop of photos and sit on a bench nearby to leaf through them. Usually there'd be at least some we had totally forgotten about because they had been taken months ago, maybe several months ago. Some wouldn't turn out at all, some would be blurry or really badly exposed, and some would be amazing.

They'd go back in the envelop and might come out again to show a friend or family member, or to be put into that mythical photo album. But most likely they would go in a box and never be looked at again. The box would gradually fill up. We have several dozen envelops and the box is pretty full. 

If you've been following along on this, and my photoblog, you'll know I've been putting film through some old cameras, and putting some of the results in my blogs. Just yesterday I posted some Christmas lights on my photoblog using Cinestill film. The intent with these is to have fun, learn a bit more about photography, and in an ideal world produce some interesting photos.

The same time I handed in those to be developed, I finished a roll of black and white film in the small camera. I digitized those yesterday, using a technique involving two panes of special glass to hold the negatives flat. That went very well.

A couple things related to that came to fruition yesterday. One, a while ago was a buddy who had inherited stuff from his recently deceased parents which included negatives from before WWII. I showed him the process, but the carrier made it a bit difficult. I've mentioned the glass to him, but he's deeply involved in some projects of his own just now. I'm also unearthing an old Mac computer, and trying to find all the related parts. I'm still looking for the original keyboard and mouse. In the process of this I unearthed the box of photos, and enjoyed opening a few at random.

This is one of the reasons why looking for things takes so long. One is there are lots of places to look. The other is discovering other things that might have been the object of a search at another time, or that lead you down memory lane. The older I get, the more attractive memory lane seems to be, in some ways.

Many of the photo envelops include negatives, and some of the photos are pretty good. Some are from early in our marriage and include our cats of that time, Sebastian and Nefertitti, so they are of historical interest to us, at least. I was amused to see photos from our first back yard reno process, which included building a stone retaining wall and steps to the back door. The really amusing part is that I still not only had hair, but had a beard as well. This dates it to the very late 80's or early 90's. There may be earlier yet photos. 

I'm going to gradually work my way through the photos and digitize those that seem to be worth doing. Some may make it here, with suitable commentary. As a side note I'm not going to go to extraordinary lengths to make these photos perfect. I'll try to minimize dust spots and hair as I put the negatives on the glass, but I'm not going to obsess about it. I'll colour balance the photos, but I'm not going to clean them up. After all, these were taken by people who were not photographers, using a point and shoot camera with a plastic lens, on unknown film stock, with unknown settings, and developed by a lab that was processing and printing some large number of rolls of film per day. This is decidedly not an artesinal process.

Here's a few from the recent roll of black and white.

1. South Glenmore Park.

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6. Big Hill Springs park, film from a walk with Sean a couple weeks ago.

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8. Me. Almost none of my readers have seen me with this much hair. And Sebastian, the terror of the local cat neighbourhood.

9. The first back yard construction project in progress.

Serendipity from 2017.

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