Gave us those nice bright colors, the greens of summer. →
I love my digital cameras. I love traveling with a few small cards instead of an immense pile of film. I love being able to use the fridge door for its intended use- food. Mostly, I love seeing an image immediately, being able to tweak a little bit here and there on the spot if I think I can do better.
But I do miss film sometimes, if only for the romance of it. Spending hours alone in my high school darkroom, nervously watching images appear on paper and crossing my fingers that I didn’t make a mistake. The excitement of opening a box of slides days after a trip, as if I was experiencing the trip all over again with each slide I held up to the light. The thrill of realizing that I totally nailed that shot, whew.
I started shooting semi-seriously a little too late to appreciate Kodachrome personally -my drug of choice was Velvia after I moved on from B&W- but my mother was a photographer and I remember rolls of the stuff floating around the house. As an art student, she only shot in black and white. But with a family and the advent of the living room slide show, Kodachrome nudged out the competition and became her preferred medium. There was nothing like it at the time. The colors were richer, the light more vibrant. And it could be shot and held onto for a long time- sometimes for years. (A bonus for professional photographers and cluttered family homes alike.)
After she died, I found a couple of unexposed rolls of Kodachrome stuffed into boxes along with all of the family slides. Never did get them processed. Guess they’re Christmas ornaments now.
