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When photos were shiny.
Mar. 6th, 2009 01:56 amI got my 20 free prints from Snapfish today. You know, I keep saying, I kind of miss the days when cameras used film, and my dad would take finished rolls to the drugstore, and a few days later, there'd be this little packet full of mystery. And everyone in the family would pass the prints around, reliving all the memories, and discovery for the first time whether any of those shots had been any good. I guess it's just one of those little moments that's hard to recapture in this day and age of personal isolation.
Don't get me wrong. Digital cameras are a godsend. I have become quite dependent on the take-a-billion-pictures-and-hope-one-of-them-turns-out-well strategy. Considering Dorky Asian Photos (where you hold out your arm and point the camera back at yourself) can be very hit-or-miss. I've gotten pretty good (there are some nice examples from China), but often it's much faster just to kind of tilt my hand about and snap a couple and run, rather than check and reposition between each shot until I get it just right. And I was taking pictures for a school symposium last week, where I had to zoom in a lot and the image stabilization in my camera wasn't helping all that much. Out of something like 133 pictures, I sent 48 on to the symposium directors.
But still, sometimes I miss the film days and the shiny prints and the little pocket in the front with the negatives. We probably still have all of our negatives lying around somewhere, no to mention all the duplicate prints we always got. It's still a little strange to me that no online photo printing service does 3.5x5. That was all we ever got back in the day. Most of my albums don't even take 4x6.
Anyway, it was a little like the old days, when I opened my Snapfish order. There they were, all shiny. Just missing the negatives in the front pocket, and the duplicates, and a little bigger than usual. And that I knew exactly what the pictures would look like. But still.
I'm sticking them in the random photo folio thing that LexisNexis gave me last summer. When I have an office, I want to post them up. I tried to gather together memories from over the years: the Blacker frosh picture, Lord of the Rings Ditch Day, Japan internship, SURF at JPL, Mock Trial, China, Prosecution Clinic. There are some memories I don't have as well-documented as I like. (I really need to track down a group picture of our ChemE class. I'm pretty sure someone took some at graduation.) I also printed some group pictures of various subsets of my extended family. I am a total sucker for group pictures, have I ever said that?
And, definitely going up in my office, is my collection of "waterfalls from around the world". Okay, so I only have three (Berry Creek Falls in California, Waimoku in Hawaii, and Kouza in Japan), but I'll work on it.
Sometimes, like with books, I just like having something to hold in my hands.
Don't get me wrong. Digital cameras are a godsend. I have become quite dependent on the take-a-billion-pictures-and-hope-one-of-them-turns-out-well strategy. Considering Dorky Asian Photos (where you hold out your arm and point the camera back at yourself) can be very hit-or-miss. I've gotten pretty good (there are some nice examples from China), but often it's much faster just to kind of tilt my hand about and snap a couple and run, rather than check and reposition between each shot until I get it just right. And I was taking pictures for a school symposium last week, where I had to zoom in a lot and the image stabilization in my camera wasn't helping all that much. Out of something like 133 pictures, I sent 48 on to the symposium directors.
But still, sometimes I miss the film days and the shiny prints and the little pocket in the front with the negatives. We probably still have all of our negatives lying around somewhere, no to mention all the duplicate prints we always got. It's still a little strange to me that no online photo printing service does 3.5x5. That was all we ever got back in the day. Most of my albums don't even take 4x6.
Anyway, it was a little like the old days, when I opened my Snapfish order. There they were, all shiny. Just missing the negatives in the front pocket, and the duplicates, and a little bigger than usual. And that I knew exactly what the pictures would look like. But still.
I'm sticking them in the random photo folio thing that LexisNexis gave me last summer. When I have an office, I want to post them up. I tried to gather together memories from over the years: the Blacker frosh picture, Lord of the Rings Ditch Day, Japan internship, SURF at JPL, Mock Trial, China, Prosecution Clinic. There are some memories I don't have as well-documented as I like. (I really need to track down a group picture of our ChemE class. I'm pretty sure someone took some at graduation.) I also printed some group pictures of various subsets of my extended family. I am a total sucker for group pictures, have I ever said that?
And, definitely going up in my office, is my collection of "waterfalls from around the world". Okay, so I only have three (Berry Creek Falls in California, Waimoku in Hawaii, and Kouza in Japan), but I'll work on it.
Sometimes, like with books, I just like having something to hold in my hands.
