The Camera

Once upon a time, the camera was a luxury. To have your photo taken was up there with meeting the queen and winning the lottery.

Only a few cameras were produced and only a few knew how to use them so in the presence of a photographer was something special. I see a few black and white snapshots of my family at the beach and wondered who made these memories happen? They were all stilted and staged as if Mathew Brady took them but they are the only evidence of people associated with my family I do not know.

There are captures in time of our family so we must have had a camera somewhere along the way. At the time most pictures were taken outside for the light because a flash attachment was not available.

For Christmas or Birthday I received a point-and-shoot camera. It was still elementary school and color film had become available. I took snapshots of my classes at junior high school as a record of time. This may have provided the school system to assume I was a photographer and moved me to the yearbook staff.

With even the most antique cameras with dark bags to retrieve film to be processed by another before being reloaded by feel. At the same time, the Polaroid camera was becoming popular. These camera were not instantaneous but had to be processed and waited on, but were faster than waiting for the bag of 4x5 prints coming days later.

In college I decided I need a ‘professional’ 35mm camera. I bought lenses and straps and a carry bag and all sorts of attachments and try to learn how to make all the numbers work on shutter speed and aperture while trying to adjust focus to capture the shot. As any photographer will tell you, you got to take an entire roll of film to get a good photo. At the same time I learned how to process film in a dark room but only made prints for all my fellow students who wanted to remember their mates in film.

After college I couldn’t afford the cost of photography with other artistic desires so I sold my camera and all the stuff and went onto another focus.

Video was becoming an expensive fad but was as complicated as my reel-to-reel audio tape recorder. The Polaroid became a self-developing process so that became popular, for obvious reasons.

Then the digital age hit and anything became possible. Capture any event or situation with low-resolution images that can be posted on a multitude of media sites for anyone to view and comment. 

I have noticed that the people I associate with DO NOT take selfies.