Viewfinder
My first real camera was a Pentax K-1000. I shot Kodak T-max black-and-white film, switching to Tri-X later because that’s what everyone else was doing, even though I always thought the T-max was better.
I had a terrible habit of putting my hands in the chemicals when I was developing images. I liked to rub the paper and make the silvery faces and trees and odd shots of the cat appear.
Behind thick glasses and awkward clothing I had peered apologetically at the world and the artist-athletes at my Boston prep school. I took my pictures and then buried them in a big acid-free box I never opened, but never ever not in 15 years and 8 moves did I lose.
Last February I found the box of black-and-white images, soggy in the flotsam of the post-flood basement. I laid the photos out a screen door across two box towers. They dried crinkly, but they dried.
The Pentax K-1000 is here, too. I think it is broken. I have considered having it repaired, finding a few rolls of T-Max and having a go. But practicality has to come in somewhere — I don’t have access to a darkroom, and Wal-Mart-developed T-Max is garden-ripe strawberries dipped in margerine.
I’ve gone through five digital cameras in as many years. They froze mid-video, chewed through batteries, and were left out in the rain by my children. They took only so-so images, which I instinctively angled for maximum interest, even when it was only a 6 year-old’s gymnastics show.
Who would I have been, what would have Mattered, if I had chosen not to have children?
So it was that I wandered into a small local camera shop and wandered out with my first real camera since 1992.
It comes with an instruction video.
I don’t have time to watch instruction videos.
So instead I brought the camera with me.
We went to the Pops Goes the Fourth Esplanade dress rehearsal. Behind a stroller, the Diaper Bag on my back, the Running Dialogue of Maternal Instruction going, the constant head count to be sure I left with as many children with which I had arrived, I kept one hand on my new Olympus E-410, braced carefully against my hip.
The first shots felt the first steps out of bed after a bad stomach bug.
Maddening. Just freaking maddening.
And then a gem:
Another gem — two kids in a First Aid tent, being given popscicles by Red Cross volunteers, all shadows and smiles and untied shoes and rubber-gloved hands offering treats. I snapped the shot, admired it on the tiny screen.
“Delete it,” said a hostile woman, a Mother Who Knew Her Rights. Thank God this function I had figured out: Delete. Yes again. Gone.
(Can’t let strangers take pics of the kids IT MIGHT END UP ON THE INTERNET.)
A failed picture of a long line of ducks, mothers and babies, paddling toward the Hatch Shell in an etheral blue-gray of water, mist, shiny feathers.
And then this, which I couldn’t resist:
Mare had tried to look sad in the shot, but the grin was irrepressible, and she begged me to let her try again.
“Sad, Mare,” I said. “C’mon, really sad.”
“Lady,” grinned a passing Massachusetts State Trooper, “that’s just sick.”
I went to get cotton candy for the girls. A few shots of the candy makers: too dark, too blurry. Delicious - I delete, it’s gone, doesn’t crowd my conciousness with its imperfection. Dangerous– IMPERFECTION IS OKAY.
Shoot the shot and don’t worry about whether it’s any good.
I gave the girls their candy and then took endless pictures of them eating it, fiddling with the flash, making our neighbors on the green nuts. I deleted, set the camera aside, promised to stop.
The 1812 Overature began and I caved, taking the camera to the water’s edge to try out the zoom.
Nothing like a few rounds from an M-198 Howitzer to scare the shit out of a couple of ducks.
The show was over. We got all the gear into the backpack, the wet picnic blanket (more laundry) into the stroller, the kids shoed, clothed, snapped-in, secured to a grownup. I took hip shots at anything that looked interesting. Nothing worked out until a vintage shop on Charles street, the window decadent in rhinestones and feathers and invitation.
She did not need to be asked twice:
July 4th, 2008 at 10:09 am
gee, liz, you’ve got to resolve to quit blogging more often!!!
i got a digital camera as a gift a few years ago. it lives in my closet — i have never cozied up to it, somehow. but i confess it’s because i was expecting a much, much smaller package that holiday {which never materialized}.
July 4th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
I keep coming here, thinking that you won’t be here but then you have a new post.
In that first “lost kids” photo, Ren looks so much like you it isn’t funny.
Also, I ahve a digital camera, that I don’t take with me enough. When I do take pictures I take about 600 and never delete them. So, I have thousands of unsatisfactory photos clogging up my hard-drive.
I need to learn how to take more pictures, while still deleting more pictures. Or maybe take a photography class?
July 4th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
I’m loving the blogging break too!
Great pics. I’m trying to decide whether or not I “need” a new camera. Mine has a tiny view screen and it is 6 years old, but I love it for the most part.
I love digital, but do really miss the anticipation of getting back pictures. And photo albums, I know I can order digital albums and all that, but there is something about getting pics back and sitting down to put them all in the album that is so satisfing.
Have a Happy 4th. We are off to hopefully make some memories and not forget to take out the camera.
July 4th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
Wait, so they’ve got that “Look Fabulous” sign hanging so that it is facing a mirror in the back of the store, and the back of the sign has the crown? That is awesome!!
July 4th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Like the others, I’m enjoying all these posts!! Looks like a fun night - I laughed at the ‘lost children’ picture.
July 5th, 2008 at 10:36 am
I too went to a prep school in the Boston area and took TONS of photography classes. I especially loved being alone in the darkroom on a Saturday morning watching all the images appear. I always ended up with chemicals on my shoes. I miss the process so much, but have been contemplating purchasing a “real” digital camera as you’ve done to try to make up for it. Thanks for the push.
July 7th, 2008 at 7:56 am
Know how you feel about the camers. Spent the 70’s with a photography hobby. Canon body, multiple lenses, many filters, the whole 9 yards. Shot plus-X, Tri-X, infrared, pan, Kodachrome, etc. Took endless shots adjusting f stop, shutter speed, etc. to get the feel I wanted. I recently bought a Olympus SP-550 digital. I have read the instruction book at least 5 times, and I am still not sure I have the faintest idea how to use all (or even very many) of the functions this camera has.
With all this marvelous technology, I am still stuck at the “point and click” snapshot level. It was all a lot simpler when there were manual, rather than electronic controls.
Did you get the Olympus Master 2.0 software with your camera? If so, you can do some of the things you used to do in a darkroom to your digital photos after you have downloaded them.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Still have my Pentax K-1000. Still love it.
Unfortunately, we mostly use the digital these days, if we remember to take pics at all.
July 7th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
I still have and use the K1000 I bought when I was 13 years old. Best camera ever. I love it.
July 7th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Ok Liz, What other talents do you have??? Is there anything you can’t do well. You are so talented !!!
Awesome pictures LOVE the “lost” picture!!
PS: I am also digging the blogging break.
Hugs
July 8th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Am loving the “Lost Kids” shot (something I would also totally do) as well as the shot of the trooper/officer. I love shots where the focal point is clear and everything else is fuzzy.
I am a total amateur with my digital camera but found it has helped me take much better pictures because I can see the final product before I click. My pix on a conventional (read basic, dummy proof camera with no bells or whistles) were “meh” at best. I would love to take a photog class but don’t know if I can grasp all the apeture and lenses and whatnot.
July 10th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Elizabeth, I just gave you an Excellent Blog Award!
July 11th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
ah, the joys of Tri-X and the K-1000… I miss them dearly…
digital has its good points, particularly if you shot a billion shots per minute… no pesky crap prints to throw away… but it’s just not the same.
I couldn’t afford to go all the way and get a DSLR but did get a Nikon P-5100… 12 megapixels and lots of interesting settings… I think any digital camera takes getting used to and sussing out of modes, programs, etc…
Rock on with with that thing!
July 11th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
That photo of Mare in front of the “Lost Kids” sign is priceless. She sure hammed it up real good.
So glad you are still posting occasionally…I can only read your book, and older posts so many times. *lol*
July 18th, 2008 at 5:15 am
cute black babies…
Sorry, don’t agree 100% with you on this!…