There were many days growing up that I played by myself. I would often pack a little suitcase of doll items, grab my large baby doll Elizabeth Jane, and go outside in the yard for hours. Mother gave me an old camera to play with. It was a dark maroon German bellows camera. It looked like a 4" by 8" rectangle box. Opening it up, the lens pulled out accordion style. We didn't have film for it, but I 'used it' anyway, taking posed pictures of the flowers, plants, my doll, and our cat, Tiger.
My first real camera was a box Brownie. The whole family operated it, so it really wasn't mine. Mother instructed how to load the film - we had to be in a dark place, couldn't touch anything but the edges of the film, and we had to be sure to start winding the film before we closed it. After taking a shot, you had to manually dial the roll forward. Most rolls were 24 pictures, but my parents always tried to squeeze at least one more snap. Black and white film was the norm for many years.
Later we got a flash camera for taking pictures indoors or outside with poor lighting. The large round bulbs kind of blew up - they got very hot and melted. You had to be careful when removing them not to get burned.
My first real camera was a box Brownie. The whole family operated it, so it really wasn't mine. Mother instructed how to load the film - we had to be in a dark place, couldn't touch anything but the edges of the film, and we had to be sure to start winding the film before we closed it. After taking a shot, you had to manually dial the roll forward. Most rolls were 24 pictures, but my parents always tried to squeeze at least one more snap. Black and white film was the norm for many years.
Later we got a flash camera for taking pictures indoors or outside with poor lighting. The large round bulbs kind of blew up - they got very hot and melted. You had to be careful when removing them not to get burned.
My grandmother's niece visited us in the late 1950s from New Mexico bringing a Polaroid camera with them. We were all fascinated with the instant developing of the picture and posed for several shots. The film was expensive, so it was important to make each picture count. If you peeled the cover before the picture developed, too bad. You also had to be careful not to touch the print until it was completely dry. You can pick those Polaroids out of a box full of prints by the triangular point of paper on the bottom edge. We never invested in this type of camera.
My mother became the primary photographer of the family after she bought her Kodak. She got involved in making changes on all the settings, relying on her light meter. She wanted to have a special camera to take pictures on her many trips to Mexico where she completed graduate studies in Spanish. She had dozens of rolls developed into slides, the least expensive method. This meant we had to have a slide projector. Each slide had to be loaded into the rectangular tray, turned a specific way or else the image was not upright. We didn't have enough trays for all the slides, so Mother would have to unload and load trays as we went along. This was the perfect moment to be allowed to leave the room for a snack or bathroom break. Often the images were the wrong way, and she would stop, take it out, reposition it, and start again. Tough times for kids with limited attention spans. After about three or four times of watching 100+ slides of Mexico, we started to groan when Mother wanted to have a slide night. She later bought a projection screen which was better than using a white sheet on the wall. The pictures were dear to Mother and brought back good memories. Thinking back now I wish we had listened more carefully for details of her trips.
Speaking of avoidance, we could add watching some of Dad's sea-sickening home movies. Dad was the movie camera operator. We have many shots of his feet while he was trying to figure out how to work the camera and his filming moved back and forth so fast, rather than capturing the visual movement, my mother always got motion sick watching the reruns. Dad tried to direct our moves on film but when he brought the camera out we almost always froze. We didn't own our own projector so we relied on a family friend to bring over his equipment. That meant we didn't see the movies as often as the slides. Most of Dad's treasured films were hunting trips with my brother, friends and of course, the hunting dogs. Other shows were family vacations at the lake skiing or our one big family drive to Missouri. We had some of the reels converted to a VHS tape many years ago - pictures, but no sound with those old cameras.
There were very few spontaneous pictures and getting just the right pose was a challenge. We always knew which pictures my dad had taken because they were only partial shots, with our heads missing. As cameras advanced we got the Instamatic with flash cubes and ones with automatic winding. A new camera was often under the Christmas tree.
I took a trip to the Holy Land after high school and one day while out on a tour I lost my camera. I was sitting down feeling sad about losing pictures of all the special places I had been. One of the elderly gentlemen on the tour came by and snapped my picture. Turns out he was using my camera and I was so glad to have it returned. Unfortunately those printed 3" by 3" color pictures are now badly faded and most are stuck to the old self adhering photo album pages we so often used. The negatives are now gone, but I had saved them for about 20 years.
I took a trip to the Holy Land after high school and one day while out on a tour I lost my camera. I was sitting down feeling sad about losing pictures of all the special places I had been. One of the elderly gentlemen on the tour came by and snapped my picture. Turns out he was using my camera and I was so glad to have it returned. Unfortunately those printed 3" by 3" color pictures are now badly faded and most are stuck to the old self adhering photo album pages we so often used. The negatives are now gone, but I had saved them for about 20 years.
There were travel articles warning of the dangers of moving through airport security systems - developing in the late '60s - that would damage your film. In the early days we hand carried our camera and all the rolls of film, asking the airport employees to carefully protect them from exposure. Film changed as cameras updated going from the 35mm canister rolls to the drop in cartridges.
After trying to rearrange a closet recently I found over 20 old photo albums, from '50s black and whites to Polaroids. I also have a large container full of loose photos in the garage taking up space. Downloading them myself is SO time consuming and sending them out to convert to a CD becomes expensive. For now, I'm just going to reshelve the albums and put that organization issue on hold.
It was sad to have to clear out some of my mother's house last year and realize we just can't save everything from the past. When it comes to shelves full of old snapshots, perhaps memories can be the 'photos' we keep instead.
"I thank my God in all my remembrance of you." Philippians 1:3
It was sad to have to clear out some of my mother's house last year and realize we just can't save everything from the past. When it comes to shelves full of old snapshots, perhaps memories can be the 'photos' we keep instead.
"I thank my God in all my remembrance of you." Philippians 1:3
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