Yesterday I had a few errands to run but also wanted to just get out
of the house for a bit. So I threw the laptop into the Timbuk2 and
added, with a moment's thought, the Pentax 645 fitted with the 45mm
lens. I still had half a roll of film in it unexposed from the
November trip around the US, maybe I'd use it up.
I did my errands and ended up at the coffee shop down the street, the
Starbux where I have my photos hanging. Reminded me that I best get
off my butt and get the next set ready to hang; I've been kinda
bogged down and in a funk with getting the work finished the past
week or so.
A couple of the folks I see there all the time were there so we
engaged in some conversation ... a lot to do with politics and such.
I had a print of the portrait I'd done of one of them in my bag so I
gave it to him as a gift ... he's the neat geezer in
http://homepage.mac.com/ramarren/photo/PAW5/32.htm
and a lot of fun to chat with.
Once that bunch headed out, I pulled out the laptop and started
poking at some more photos from the NY trip and from my junta to
Nashville, TN. I also pulled out the Pentax 645 and started fooling
with it, framing a composition of the tables and chairs across the
aisle from where I was sitting. There was a college student sitting
at the table behind me.
"Excuse me, is that some kind of video camera?"
"No. It's a medium format SLR camera. Still photos."
"Where's the display screen?"
"It doesn't have one ... it takes a 6cm wide strip of roll film."
pause ... "Wow. It looks big and heavy. Why would anyone use film
when there are such good digital cameras on the market today?"
The fact of the question is more important than any answer I might
come up with. Here we have a college student, maybe 20-22 years old,
who cannot see the point. We talked for a while about the photos on
the wall, about rendering and black&white vs color, about all kinds
of stuff, but in the end I could see that the notion of why one would
expose film, play with chemistry, etc just to take a picture was
simply incomprehensible to him. Cameras, even photography before the
present world of digital cameras simply is not a part of his
consciousness.
Later that evening, I was talking to my brother. One of his friends
is getting ready to move with his family because his wife has
accepted a new position in another state. "He used to drive the truck
that went from photolab to photolab, delivering chemistry and picking
up the waste chemicals for silver reclamation. Used to be ten of them
running all day, every day. Now there's not enough business to fund
more than one person on a twice a week circuit through the labs."
A strange feeling. I still have three exposures to go on that roll of
film.
Godfrey
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