I didn't buy my own house or even live alone until I moved to the US. This
meant that my parents never insisted that I take my junk out of their attic
while we were living in the same continent. During my visit a couple of weeks
a go they still didn't insist that I take it all with me but they suggested
that I go up there and sort though it a bit.
Among my college essays, turntable and beer towels I found my old cameras
and negatives; a little dusty and suffering from being cooked in the summer
and frozen in the winter but still relatively intact. I quickly worked out
what I could carry with us on our return flight; all the negatives, some of
the prints and a lot of the cameras. My first ever camera was there; a plastic
110 from the late 70's. My first SLR; a tank-like Zenit EM.
I look forward to getting reacquainted with some of the cameras for old-times
sake.
My attitude was similar towards the negatives and I've obsessively
started the long process of scanning them all. I finished scanning several
films from my first trip to the US to be a councilor at a camp
in Maine. Seeing those old images and faces has brought many memories back.
This shot is from '89 when I was taking photography reasonably seriously. It's
of a piece of abandoned machinery that lay somewhere between my digs and the
college I attended in Ripon, N.Yorks.
Looking through my old negs is certainly an eye opener. I wasn't as good as
I thought I was; perhaps I'm still not. I wasn't as in control of the process
or the exposure as I thought I was. I was already shooting a lot of the same
kinds of subjects and in the same style as I still do. I wish I could go back
and tell the younger me what I was doing wrong but I guess I had to make those
mistakes for myself.
I think that I'll post the odd shot from the 80's from time-to-time and
see if anyone spots them. |
