End of an era

Christian and I have finally come to grips with the end of an era. The era of film that is. When I first met Christian, he was a photographer. Photo editor of the Highlander, that is. The school paper at UCR. I dabbled in photography myself back in high school. We spent our youth travelling our world (which consisted of mostly just the western United States) with cameras in tow. Backpacking and road trips were our great escapes from the world. We'd get home from work Friday night, throw our gear into the back of a truck and off we'd go.

I worked for an auto manufacturer, so I leased many of their vehicles and with the amount of miles I commuted back and forth to work plus our endless road trips, I ended up getting a new car about every 6 months!

We were never quite happy with the pictures we sent in to be developed. The prints invariably came back with heads cropped when the negative were fine. The negatives came back scratched. Or they developed them with dirty over used chemicals out of cheapness or neglect or both. We ended up starting up our own dark room. We'd seal up a closet or bathroom and worked for weekends at a time on our treasured memories. It was very time consuming. We could never quite keep up with the rolls of film we kept bringing back from our trips.

In the end, Christian got me my first digital camera some 7 years or more ago so that I could print my own pictures of family and friends and stuff. We kept the film cameras for our adventures.

Shortly after, we began our family. With kids and a greatly decreased income since I wasn't working anymore, our trips trickled down to once in a blue moon and the film cameras came out less and less until it basically sat packed away in the back of the closet along with all our darkroom equipment. With the hundreds (okay, thousands) of pictures we took of the kids, it would have been impossible to take them with film.

When we moved, we found no room anywhere to store all our now useless darkroom equipment and camera supplies (among other things). Our dreams of restarting our photography again when the kids grew up and left the house became just a pipe dream and we knew it. Film, chemicals, paper are all getting more and more difficult to procure. Digital photography has improved significantly, although it will never produce the same results.

First, we thought that we would have to end up throwing a lot of it away. Christian decided to try to sell them online. Most of it has all gone in the past couple of weeks. It has been a rather sad and stressful experience. It went rather a lot quicker than we anticipated though...probably due to the rock bottom prices he set them at. There is still a niche for this kind of thing apparently. Mostly by older, retired individuals who still hang on to the old art of photography. He priced them to go quickly so that the whole ordeal would be over sooner than later.

With some of the proceeds of the sale, he ended up getting me this baby for my birthday. My very own DSLR! I never thought we would be able to afford one. I'll still be able to use my old lenses and flash!

Unfortunately, my own 35mm SLR is quite worthless now. Although once a really nice camera in its own right, there is simply no market for it anymore. Christian's camera, a Nikon F4, was an icon of it's time. A professional work horse of a camera. Used by National Geographic photographers and such in it's day. I would have always thought that he would have been buried with it.

I was rather reluctant and horrified at the thought of him selling it. I told him I didn't want a new camera. It would be the camera that guilt built. I couldn't bare it. But he convinced me that the camera and all our other equipment was useless to us now. And that we might as well get something we can enjoy out of it.

Alas, all that is left now is the memories. Memories of a simpler time of our lives with less responsibility and care. An end of an era indeed.

p.s. This post is dedicated to my selfless husband. I love you!