Photographic Nostalgia

Warning!!! 
Nostalgia Post that inadvertently turned into possible self-promotion. 
Read at your own peril! 

I am a lover of old things, of ways gone by, etc.  I admit that I tend towards a bit of nostalgia and rose colored glasses about ways and tools of the past.  This leads to the delight in the crack of a new book spine as you open it, the smell old must and old paper when you pick up a battered tome in the used bookstore.  E will happily tell you (and I will back her up) that they do not making clothing like they used to.  True, we now have durable, flexible blends of cotton and polyester, but they are often mass-produced (after all, we have a ton of people on the planet that would like to be clothed) with little care.  Even though, YES, real people actually work in factories and make dresses, sometimes whoever is designing said dress is a moron who thinks things made to fit no conceivable shape- small or large and cut out of polyester/rayon blend with 2 % cotton (why bother?) will be a good idea.

But I SUVed.

Because I love old things (and yes, I do realize the ridiculous-ness of saying such things while I type on my laptop for my blog) I also love taking the time to make art.
Like photography. 
Don't get me wrong - I love, love, LOVE my new Samsung Galaxy S5 (and no, no one's paying me to say that.  I should really like - get someone to give me money for these things) and it's pretty frickin' awesome camera.

'Cause this level of detail is apparently no sweat for that tiny lens...

E likes to say it's all because of the kdrama (she may be right) and declares she'll get around to "updating" when CN BLUE makes a new CF plugging the latest Samsung Smart phone and I feel compelled to upgrade.  (I'd like to say that I'm not that easily swayed, but ...in my defense: I did have a contract upgrade coming up with my provider and I was going to update anyways.)

SUV again!!!

Photography.
Right.  For those of you who aren't familiar with traditional photography (and I disclaimer right now that I am by NO MEANS an expert), Photography was one of those world-changing inventions that allowed us not only to take endless selfies and photos of our food (cause... I never do the latter...) but document some of the most important events of our world, the sensational and mundane.

I confess that I love everything from gritty documentary photography to stylized wedding photos to photography that almost seems more like an abstract painting.

Like this shot of my AWESOME former housemate, Brandi practicing her fire-twirling in our Cincinnati yard. 

Photographers used to have to lug a massive amount of equipment around just to get a good shot.  Photographs were taken by exposing light to silver compounds (I see a vampire/werewolf plot point in there somewhere.) and the sitter had to remain extraordinarily still.  In fact, several contraptions that held the sitter in a vice-like grip were developed to keep the subject from moving for the several minutes that was required to take the picture.

Techniques like this long-exposure shot were not exactly en-vogue back then. 

Fast forward several years (we're talking like half a century here) to photographers running around with the infamous Kodak film and compact field cameras that can be held in one hand.   I personally own a 1970's era Nikon FG which I adore and recently found a old Minolta at the local thrift store.

Possibly not a Nikon, but you get the idea. 

Learning how to focus on different areas of a photo made me ridiculously geeked out. 

After a while, I realized that taking endless photos of flowers gets dull after a while. It helps to have a fireman dad. 
 

I later progressed to quirky shots like this one of one of my housemate, Carolyn from Cincinnati, while in grad school.

 Which brings me to now.  I also own a Canon DSLR (which sadly is currently giving me fits) and I love the convenience of having a digital camera. 

Oooh!  Easy Impressive focusing, I thought!

Action Shots!

Special FX without having to try very hard!!

I admit that though, that it's made me lazy.  I started my love affair with photography knowing that I only had a limited amount of frames (usually 24) to fill with photos.  I had to calculate such things as film speed, aperture, light, contrast, composition, color, balance.  

Light

Contrast

Color

Difficult Subject Matter.

And that was before I even considered things such as a fickle subject matter that might move on me, unstable conditions.  Sometimes I'd had one, maybe two good pictures from an entire roll. 

Perfect moment in a Filipino Sunset, Courtesy of a return trip my senior year of high school.

 And film and developing weren't cheap, even when considering I was using my local Walgreens or the resources at the local high school to develop things "old school" as it were.    

I learned photography from my Dad who took the camera everywhere in his youth, documenting his adventures all over Asia.  He once told me about a meeting a National Geographic Photographer on way back from assignment (sadly he doesn't remember the artist's name) who was cautiously transporting an entire mesh laundry bag full of rolls of undeveloped film.  Would those rolls get wet, exposed to light, or excessive radiation from the checked luggage screeners - those moments would be lost forever.

Dad started out with stuff like this.  I was suitably impressed.

And this guy.  Awesome wrinkles. 

Dad was good at capturing the unusual and the mundane with equal appreciation.  Like this shot of my Grandpa in a corn-husking competition. 

Now, I can record a moment in time, have it instantly upload to my dropbox, remotely from my smartphone - make a backup on my external hard drive (or give someone access to do so remotely) and that's not even counting the instant gratification of uploading it on a plethora of social media.

My whole point is that I really do love technology- it's genuis how we can do so many things so easily now.  But sometimes (and I know this is not a new conversation) I get a little wistful about how impatient I am now.  How I don't take the time to compose pictures like I used to.  How I have sooo many photos yet to sort- subpar photos - because I knew I could just keep hitting the shutter and sort later.  How I feel rushed anytime I do a gig (for pay or free) because everyone's waiting, and I have to "get it done" and I can edit later. 

So today, someone on Facebook linked to this great article about National Geographic photographer (which, by the way, is basically my gold standard for fascinating and excellent photography, if you must know), Steve McCurry, who was entrusted with the very last roll of Kodak Kodachrome film that would ever be developed anywhere on planet earth (at least- until we can't stand it anymore and try to remake the stuff).  He took a very random and excellent assortment of photos for this epic last roll.

I encourage you to check it out here. 
 http://stevemccurry.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/the-end-of-an-era-1935-to-2010/

(Fair warning - he is a documentary photographer, so there may be content that is a bit much for the kiddos - use caution).

Perhaps - in my copious spare time - ha.  I can get back to the wonderful slowness of taking photos the old way.  After all, you can still get your film developed.  It just takes a little more work and money.
And I don't really have photos on my walls at apt, even though I've moved in quite some time ago.
Perhaps it's about time to remedy that.