Lyme Loungin’
Don’tcha just love being alive in the 21st century? Digital photoooos alone are enough to make me happy! I never quite got the hang of film. Do *not* get me wrong! I *totally* appreciate old-skool film photography. But I was such a klutz. I had a couple of [film] cameras as a kid. The first one was a kind of boxy form factor (I may be dreaming this one up…) Then I think I had an instamatic. What a pain though. You shoot a roll of film (randomly, if you are me) and then you have to find *money* to get that film developed (or build a dark room, like my buddy Kev did) and *usually* a *ride* to someplace that will develop the film. My parents were pretty indulgent overall. Money was not that hard to come by but I knew that we were not rich and so I did not ask for much. Rides? My parents both loved to drive and I could almost always get a ride somewhere. Oh, and I knew they would not spring for a dark room… But still.
I broke my last film camera. It was a slick Nikon(?) automatic kind of thing. How did I ruin it? Well. Its demise was the result of certain panicking by a couple of [beloved] male members of my family and my FULL-TILT BOOGIE PANIC to shut the damn thing down. They were concerned that I might run the battery down, if I remember accurately. They were jumping up and down shouting at me, so I shut the damn camera down… while it was still rewinding the film… Sigh… I love you guys ANYWAY! Wherever you are.
Digital? I can do digital. I am ABSOLUTELY an amateur photographer but I was an early adopter of digital camera technology, we’re talking late 1990s here. You take a gazillion photos and you delete (or not) all of the bad ones. Alas, I have gotten into some bad habits where I have NOT been diligent about deleting bad photos, either from my iPhone or iPhoto. It was kind of embarrassing when I handed my phone to our QA manager so she could see photos of the Landfill Chitchen Reno and she asked, “You have 6000 photos on your phone?” Yes. Sticking out my tongue at my old coot and The Engineer*.
Weird noises in the neighborhood? Last night: One gunshot! We’re pretty sure it was a gunshot. The GG thinks it was a rifle. This is really unusual in our nice but not fancy neighborhood. Usually gunshot-type sounds in our neighborhood can be traced to faaaarworks. This afternoon: fighter jet. I hear them occasionally, even when they are not in town for a Umich feetsball game. Once upon a time, the weekend after 911, when no planes were in the skies anywhere, I was hanging out on my strawberry iMac and a fighter jet flew overhead. Turns out that a private pilot didn’t understand the rules and took a small plane up.
* I doubt that my old coot would ever have adapted to digital photography but The Commander made a few inroads. The Engineer was alive during the early years of digital photos and he DID adapt to it. I wish he had been alive for the iPhone. He might have pooh-poohed it at first but so did I. I also think he would’ve embraced it and would have probably used it as a camera. Although not as his ONLY camera, like his terrible older sister does.
May 21st, 2014 at 8:47 pm
A few years ago I had my dad take a picture with my digital camera of us cousins at a family shindig and afterward he turned the camera over and over in his hands and then asked, “Where’s the dial to wind it?” ;o)
May 21st, 2014 at 8:58 pm
I love digital, but it hasn’t made me a more creative photographer. I did enjoy the anticipation of waiting for my photos to come back from developing, but that sometimes(often?) led to disappointment at the results. Even if I get an iPhone, I will probably buy a small digital camera because it’s way easier to keep my photos organized that way.
May 22nd, 2014 at 7:27 am
I love digital photos vs. film b/c I don’t feel bad about taking pictures of bark or 500 sunset pictures, since there’s no development cost. Plus you can look at the picture and realize that you cut off the top of someone’s head, or they’re blinking. I love looking at old pictures on film, but love taking new ones digitally.