Standing at the Trailhead of Winter

I couldn't believe how nervous I was as I poured the developer into the canister. My hands were literally shaking. You'd think I was performing some important surgery. No. I was developing my first black and white film in many years. Many, many years. I've been working towards this moment for the last three years. Every time I took a step forward, I ended up taking two backwards. I was so afraid I was going to royally mess up the process and not have any frames worth printing (or in today's world, scanning to the computer). My mindset was I'd rather not try if it meant failing. How dumb is that? Thankfully Lovely Beautiful Daughter told me to just stop. It wouldn't matter if I did fail. It's just film and chemicals. Both can be bought and the process can be tried again. And again until I get it right. I used to develop film all the time. The muscle memory would kick in sooner or later. The fails would be less and less.  I'm so glad I listened to her. Whi...

Got myself another toy today. I know absolutely nothing about this camera, but I thought it would be fun to play with (if it actually works).  I took it out of its case and started fiddling with it. I could tell there was a roll of film in it. I absolutely love getting an old camera that still has film in it. I couldn't get the rewind to work since I didn't really know what I was doing, so then the question became: Should I open it? For the next ten minutes I went back and forth. I had no idea what kind of film was in it. I had no idea how long it had been in it. It'd be cool to develop it and see what pictures the owner (who I was told was 92) had taken. But I didn't know this person and the likelihood of the images coming out decently was pretty slim. So I opened the camera.   Inside was a roll of Tri X Pan, circa the mid 1980's. I was really kicking myself for not taking more time to figure out the rewind feature, as I could have developed this roll myself and no...

Recently I've been sharing some of my photos with friends. One friend emailed me privately, asking if I had at one time studied photography or worked as a photographer because I "have a good eye." I truly appreciated my friend's kind words, and as I mulled them over, I was taken back to my time as an undergrad, when I was studying photography. I loved everything about working with film. Not long into my first black and white photography class, the TA wandered in while I was working one evening. I had just developed an image of a wind chime that hung on the front porch of my parents' old farmhouse. I had achieved a nice range of tones with the image and the TA remarked about this. I was really pleased I was understanding how to work my camera as well as the enlarger and chemicals. I spent hours in that darkroom, determined to learn as much as possible about black and white photography. The professor of the class showed up for the lecture portion but left the lab co...