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Polaroid

Remember when it cost .35 cents to find out one of the twenty eight photos taken included closed eyelids? That was back when picking up photos felt as exciting as getting mail with handwriting on the outside. I'd try to make it at least to the front seat of the car before tearing open the thick packet of shiny photos, but sometimes I'd stand right there in the store reliving a birthday party and feeling incredulous about someone ruining a perfectly good group shot by putting rabbit ears behind someone else. It felt special to get double prints and sometimes I'd send them out to the people who were in them, using the mail, paying for a stamp, writing a note on the back, in cursive.

In total, I took 4 years of photography classes in high school and college. The smell of the dark room still reminds me of the freedom a photography teacher grants to roam the campus or chat away the hour with your lab partner in a tiny red lit closet with frozen moments worth printing, clothes pinned around the room. Getting your photo taken meant you'd better comb your hair, stop horsing around and smile and the only people who looked like models on film actually were models. Fixing a photo took skill, filters, a darkroom, a light hand and patience. Sometimes is was just easier to retake a photo when the zit was gone.

When I see people photobomb, duckface and put a carefully rehearsed grin behind a peace sign, I get wistful for just saying cheese and hoping your eyes are open and your fly is shut. It reminds me, in a game of charades, should I pantomime a photographer focusing a camera, my children will never guess it correctly, just like rolling down a window, dialing a phone number and tuning in a radio station.

I still have eight rolls of film undeveloped in my box of family photos. They are from 1999 the year I saw the Cubs at Wrigley field, we had a New Years Eve party and I got a my first digital camera. I've long since forgotten what could be on those rolls and I suppose I should get them developed before there's nobody left that can remember how. Maybe there will be a good shot or three on each roll or maybe our eyes will be closed in all of them.

The Texas Sky

16 Year Old Mystery Solved!

My mother in law gave me the best present in the world yesterday and doesn't even know it. She pulled out baby & kid pictures of my husband. In the 16 years we've been together he's claimed because he's the youngest his parents don't have any pictures of him and while I knew there were at least school pictures floating out there somewhere I could never uncover any evidence. The frustration compounded by five years of "She looks just like her Dad!" from every old coot in town that looked at Ella and remembered my husband big wheeling around town in his buster browns. I spent two hours riffling through through years of family photos, and hearing crazy stories, occasionally taking a photo of a photo and finally, I can give you the side by side comparison I wished for.

Here is me on the left about age 4, Ella in the middle age 4 and Dan on the right age 5 or so.

Winter Bird

F-Stop?

My regular camera is stuck in new battery product recal customer service limbo and I am such a brow beaten consumer that I've temporarily given up and pulled out my camera from three years ago. You know the old tank that takes crap ass pics but never breaks no matter how many times I fling it to the floor or jingle it around in my purse. While I was digging around I found an old old camera that I loved but didn't seem to cooprate anymore, but they just don't make. It takes such clear pics with a hexogonal technology that Fuji abandonded for regular square pixels and I don't know why. After breaking the first, I even bought a second model on E-bay... a rebuilt one that like I said, doesn't like to cooperate.

To use either of these oldies I had to run and get new rechargable batteries, charge them and then try the old cameras out. The tank works like it always did but I forgot the cord is lost and the chip reader in my computer is not working so my pics are stuck there until Dan puts the chip in his computer and transfers them through the network to mine (Pain In The Ass.) So I ventured out into the back yard with the old old Fuji that I love to see if it wanted to play nice and it did. Hopefully it was the addition of the new batteries that caused it to love me back and maybe just maybe this relationship could work out for a while.

The following bumble bee pics were taken with my old Fuji Finepix 4700 Zoom in Northern IL. Aren't they lovely little bees! Go ahead and click on those pics and look at them all up close and personal. The detail this camera shows still just blows me away and makes it by far my favorite digital camera ever.



















These princess knight pics were taken with my old tank the Finepix E510 (after they went back to the square pixels.) They just look like regular old cutie family snap shots to me.



















One of these days I should buy some film and see what my old 35 mm Cannon can still do. I loved that camera too. That was the one that I used back in the day when I used to save up my money and buy filters instead of roller skate wheels. I wonder if anyone still teaches photography classes with "dark room time" anymore. We used to argue over who could get into the darkroom sometimes, back when I used to walk to school uphill both ways and all.

Friday

I sat down and wrote three different political rants this morning and can't seem to get it together enough to actually hit post. So instead I present to you this photgraph. It has no point.

A Long Way to Go

Bakers Blog writes "I remember seeing an episode of Ally McBeal where her therapist suggests that she give herself a theme song. She was to play that song in her head when she felt down or her self-confidence dipped (I think Ally's was "Tell Him" by The Exciters). Your theme song should be a song that gives you a lift as you walk down the street, a song that makes you feel happy, confident and in control."

My skatey matey DD Hunter posted this about her theme song and asked what mine was and it's a funny thing... It used to be Brick House when I needed a lift or a little strut in my step that's what I would hear in my head but these days I don't hear Brick House anymore. It turns out I rarely need to get the courage together in my head to do daring things, mostly before I do something crazy I need to calm my excitement and collect my thoughts and focus, what song do I hear in my head when I need to get all zen-like?

Ode to Joy, it helps me to revel in the accomplishments of humankind and centers me in a way I can't explain. But that's not all, when I'm skating out onto the derby rink I hear Sabotage, when I'm hanging out with Ella jackin' around I hear Groove is in the Heart, with Dan on date night I hear Them There Eyes, when I am riding in the car with my family almost anything by Orba Squara. So it just totally depends on what I'm doing.

Incidentaly I was gonna throw some pictures behind an Orba Squara track and make a quick video for you all to hear them and I ended up finding pictures spanning all the way from 2002(when I got my first digital camera) to last week and due to the sheer number of these pictures, I realized just how much I really love riding in the car with my family...



So what's your theme song?

Snow

11 inches of snow yesterday and here's the view from my window this morning.

Just Dandy

The First Dandelion

Simple and fresh and fair from winter's close emerging,
As if no artifice of fashion, business, politics, had ever been,

Forth from its sunny nook of shelter'd grass--innocent, golden, calm as the dawn,
The spring's first dandelion shows its trustful face.

Source: "Leaves of Grass," by Walt Whitman

Stone Bridge

August 2006 -JMM