An Ode to my 35mm

I fell in love with photography in high school
(and maybe perhaps before that)
when I took my first photography class.
I loved it.

A few years later I took a college photography class as well,
and as I was cleaning out a box today, I found some photos from those days.

I didn't have a digital camera in high school.
I had my trusty old Olympus 35mm that my mom gave me,
along with her passion for photography.

I decided to scan the photos I took in 1996, 12 years ago, to share with you guys.
These were taken on film, hand developed by me in an actual dark room.
Did you know we had to go into a tiny, blacked-out closet
to take the flim out of the camera and roll it onto a special canister?
It was hard to do it properly in the dark, let me tell you.
Then you had to measure chemicals and time how long to leave things.
You put your negatives onto contact sheets...I'll show you.

Ooops, this isn't a photo.

This is one of my artistic attempts are NOT drawing a stick person.
My boys are always laughing at my pathetic stick figure people,
so I decided to go all plump and freaky.
Remy insists he can't color unless I color with him.
So this is what I produced the other day.

And I found that I could mess with my drawings when I uploaded them to Picnik.

See, I inverted the colors on this picture. Isn't that cool? Why can't I DRAW like that.

Ok, sorry for that detour, onto the real photography.

Here we had contact sheets we just exposed to light...with feathers on them.
So, it's not a photo as much as a dark room exercise.
Made for a cool effect.

Here's an example of my contact sheet of negatives.
From this sheet we would use little magnifying glasses to inspect the pictures
and decide which ones to enlarge.

Here's a better close up of my contact sheet.
I can't believe how long ago this feels like.
Ancient history.

Then I would enlarge and print out photos...all in the dark room.

Here are some I enlarged and still had in my photography binder that I just found.

There was something so magical and fun about taking photos
and developing them in the dark room.
I miss those days.

But, now photography is a lot easier, with computers and editing software.

I'll never forget my 35mm though.