{"id":202,"date":"2017-04-04T21:57:32","date_gmt":"2017-04-05T01:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coolskill.org\/site\/?page_id=202"},"modified":"2017-09-24T22:57:17","modified_gmt":"2017-09-25T02:57:17","slug":"photography","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/coolskill.org\/site\/photography\/","title":{"rendered":"Photography and Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photography was a subject that I was interested in, but I wasn\u2019t aware that I was interested in it. \u00a0Cameras fascinated me, with all their levers and buttons that did I-don\u2019t-know-what. \u00a0My uncle was the photographer in the family, and his photographs adorned the hallways of his house. \u00a0My father was the videographer, although sometimes the \u201con\u201d and \u201coff\u201d switch would confuse him. \u00a0Somewhere we have a video of a soccer game either I or my brother was playing in that was filmed after my dad thought he had turned off the camera and laid it down on the ground. \u00a0The entire match was filmed at a ninety-degree angle. \u00a0Likewise, he failed to turn the camera off after a family reunion, and we have an entire tape full of the trunk of the car on the drive home.<\/span><\/p>\n

For a child in a family of lean means, however, photography was not an easy hobby to pursue, and so it never received much attention from me. \u00a0Developing film, while not expensive individually, was something that would add up quite a bit over time. \u00a0A good SLR camera, like my uncle used, was prohibitively expensive. \u00a0Even more expensive, from a price-per-print standpoint, was the Polaroid camera my grandmother used.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was that Polaroid camera that was the first camera I experimented with. \u00a0And since the film was so expensive, I kept every shot. \u00a0From the backlit shot of my Star Wars action figures sitting on the table to the shot where light got in and ruined the entire frame, each one went in the photo album. \u00a0(That latter shot, by the way, I titled \u201cCoffee\u00a0with Milk in it.\u201d \u00a0Because it was too expensive to throw away but otherwise too useless to keep, it needed an abstract art name.)<\/span><\/p>\n

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Coffee with Milk in it<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Polaroid produced instant results. \u00a0But less expensive to operate was the Instamatic camera that I picked up at a garage sale at some point. \u00a0It took 126 film – a square format – and used flash cubes. \u00a0Simple and almost impossible to misuse, it was the point-and-shoot camera of its era. \u00a0I was, however, jealous of classmates that had the Pocket Instamatic cameras; they had a sleeker form factor, a smaller film cartridge (using 110 film), and an electronic, reusable flash. \u00a0Still, my Instamatic camera allowed me to take pictures when we took a trip to New York City, record my cousin\u2019s high school graduation, take pictures at the now-defunct theme park <\/span>Boardwalk and Baseball<\/span><\/i>, and take general pictures around the house and local environs.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Boardwalk and Baseball parking lot; circa 1988<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

These rolls of film required processing, and I would use a mail-order service to process the pictures. \u00a0The last roll of film I shot, however, never went out for processing. \u00a0It sat in my drawer, it sat in a box in the basement, it sat in a small tin canister of assorted junk — it sat just about anywhere. \u00a0I would see it every so often and think to myself, <\/span>I need to get that developed<\/span><\/i>. \u00a0And I never did. \u00a0And then I would see it every so often and think to myself, <\/span>I wonder if I can still get that developed<\/span><\/i>. \u00a0And I never did. \u00a0And then, long after digital cameras had established their dominance in the market place, I would see it and think to myself, <\/span>I wonder if anybody can develop that anymore<\/span><\/i>. \u00a0Twenty-five years passed.<\/span><\/p>\n

One day I took that roll of film up to the local camera shop and asked if they could develop it. \u00a0Yes, they could, but there was no guarantee that there would still be usable images on the negatives. \u00a0So I left it with them, figuring that if they couldn\u2019t get anything off the film I was no worse off than I was at the moment. \u00a0The told me that it should be ready in two weeks.<\/span><\/p>\n

Five weeks later, I got a call from the camera shop. \u00a0The pictures were developed and ready to be picked up. \u00a0I drove out to the camera shop, thanked the man behind the counter profusely, and took my first look at these surprise pictures. \u00a0I had no idea what I would find.<\/span><\/p>\n

Of the 24 frames on the roll, 21 were usable. \u00a0I had a photo of my brothers playing ball in my grandmother\u2019s driveway. \u00a0I had a photo of my parents in my grandmother\u2019s living room. \u00a0I had photos from Ohiopyle State Park. \u00a0I had photos of a riverboat cruise through downtown Pittsburgh I had taken with my church youth group. \u00a0Each photo was streaked with some amount of light damage and was grainy and faded, but each photo also held quite a lot of sentimental value. \u00a0One photo in particular caught my eye. \u00a0It was a photo of the old Clark candy bar sign in Pittsburgh. \u00a0I had remembered taking that photograph; I didn\u2019t know where it had gone, but I remembered taking it. \u00a0Turns out it was sitting there, in the drawer or the box or the tin or the wherever the whole time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Brothers Playing Ball, circa 1990<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After I had been using my Instamatic camera for a few years, I started using disposable 35mm film cameras. \u00a0These were readily picked up in grocery stores and gift shops, and the camera body was nothing more than a cardboard box with a cheap lens and shutter system built in. \u00a0Some of them even had electronic flashes. \u00a0You bought the camera, took your pictures, and then sent the whole thing in to be developed. \u00a0It was this type of camera that I took on the high school band trip to Walt Disney World.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was on this trip that I took the first photo I can remember actually taking the time to frame in the viewfinder. \u00a0At one place in EPCOT, there is a boardwalk over the central lagoon from which you can see the Journey into\u00a0Imagination and the monorail track. \u00a0I wanted the monorail to pass over the Journey into\u00a0Imagination in my photo, but that was not a possible angle while standing up. \u00a0And so I delayed our group for a few minutes while I lay down on the boardwalk, hold the camera somewhere out over the lagoon, and snap the picture. \u00a0As I look at it now, there\u2019s a host of things wrong with the picture, but at the time it was exactly what I wanted. \u00a0That should be considered a success.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Monorail and Journey into Imagination, EPCOT, April 1993<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Disposable cameras lasted me throughout college. \u00a0Once I was out of college, though, the desire for a \u201creal\u201d camera was strong. \u00a0I still had no clue what all the levers and buttons did on a SLR camera, what an f\/stop was, or anything like that, but I knew I wanted something a little better than disposable cameras. \u00a0Not really knowing anything about cameras, I decided to get in on the next latest-and-greatest thing in camera technology – the Advanced Photo System camera.<\/span><\/p>\n

The APS camera was distinguished by its film cartridge. \u00a0Information other than the negative was stored on the film, information such as the date and time of the photo, aperture and shutter speed used, desired print aspect ratio, things like that. \u00a0After the film was developed, you received the negatives back inside the cartridge, protecting them from scratches. \u00a0As photographic systems went, it was considerably more advanced technologically-wise than anything else on the consumer market.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it failed.<\/span><\/p>\n

APS cameras were only on the market for about 10 years. \u00a0The reason for their failure was two-fold. \u00a0Professional and serious hobbyist photographers did not care for the smaller film size; APS film format was slightly smaller than the 35mm film they were accustomed to, and a smaller negative size meant that the prints could not be enlarged as much without significant loss of quality. \u00a0This limited the market for APS cameras to those people who only needed the camera for point-and-shoot applications: \u00a0fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles — those people who just needed the camera to take snapshots of family memories. \u00a0And those people would quickly find all the advantages of the APS cameras in another form: \u00a0digital cameras.<\/span><\/p>\n

Digital cameras had the same advantages as APS: \u00a0metadata about each image was recorded in the image file itself. \u00a0The negatives couldn\u2019t get scratched because there were no negatives. \u00a0Digital cameras also had advantages the APS cameras did not. \u00a0A digital camera could take more than 24 or 36 pictures at a time, and you did not need to get prints of all the images on the roll to see which images you wanted prints of.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had my APS camera for about five years. \u00a0During that time, it shot pictures of my uncle\u2019s wedding, the births and early childhoods of my two sons, and a trip to Boston. \u00a0But by 2003, I was tired of sending rolls of film to be developed. \u00a0I was ready for digital.<\/span><\/p>\n

My first digital camera could fit about 60 images on its memory card, more if I reduced the image size. \u00a0The first picture I took with it was one of Michael asleep in the back of our car. \u00a0It would prove to be a serviceable camera, one that would last a few years and then be upgraded to one that supported more photos on the memory card. \u00a0But it would still take a decade – and, oddly enough, getting interested in kites – that would lead me to getting my first DSLR with all the levers and buttons that did I-still-didn’t-know-what that I had envied as a child. \u00a0But that is a story for another time<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photography was a subject that I was interested in, but I wasn\u2019t aware that I was interested in it. \u00a0Cameras fascinated me, with all their levers and buttons that did I-don\u2019t-know-what. \u00a0My uncle was the photographer in the family, and his photographs adorned the hallways of his house. \u00a0My father was the videographer, although sometimes … <\/p>\n

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