This week I'm sharing my Minolta camera.
Most of you know that I have quite a collection of
film cameras.
Well, this one is my favorite.
It's identical to one my Mom bought my Dad when they were first married, which is mostly why I love it so very much.
I started using my Dad's when I first started messing around with film, and soon decided that I definitely wanted one of my own.
I have to preface this with saying that I'm by no means an expert at film photography.
I mostly just do it for fun.
I love the time that spans a roll of film and its 24 exposures. It can last a week, or a few months.
Twenty four specific moments you deemed important or memorable.
The feeling of getting film developed is basically the equivalent of Christmas.
One of my favorite sounds in the whole world is the sound of a film camera's shutter releasing.
It brings with it thoughts of long gone times, a slower and less hurried culture, filled with more care and patience.
Though I admit I almost always look at the back of the camera after I take a photo, half expecting to see a screen with the image I just shot.
Old habits die hard.
But there really is nothing like the sound of that shutter when it releases.
When I was growing up I remember going to Costco with my Mom and picking up film that we'd gotten developed from the various family cameras.
We documented the typical events in families' lives: Birthdays, vacations, graduations, holidays and other big moments like losing your first tooth, riding your bike, that turtle you found in the back yard and your first day of kindergarten etc.
I remember my brother and I would always fight over who would get to rummage through all the "B" envelopes to find ours.
I always loved doing that.
We would look through all the photos together and my Mom would routinely remind us to hold the photos gently at the edges so as not to smudge them.
Inside the envelope would be pieces of our lives: twenty four moments that spanned an event, or most often, if the camera had been used more sparingly, a couple of months or years.
Speaking of film, it's actually been a dream of mine for some time now to take a dark room class of some kind, which I know they offer at the Visual Arts Center.
So hopefully I can do that in the near future.
Thanks for helping take these photos Lorissa!
