I found my brother Larry’s camera yesterday. He has been dead several years now.
The blue plastic container first looked to store nothing of value. Just computer odds and ends, the stuff you can’t stand to throw away, but is outdated to where it is of no use to anyone.
The blue plastic container first looked to store nothing of value. Just computer odds and ends, the stuff you can’t stand to throw away, but is outdated to where it is of no use to anyone.
I realized the contents were Larry’s when I came upon the Konica camera case. You could tell immediately it was his, the leather rubbed to a buff color at the seams with a colorful woven neck strap. Duct tape held two metal canisters where the strap meets the case. One case still held a roll of Kodak 36 exposure film, unused.
I unsnapped the back of the case to find a 35 mm Konica with manual settings. I advanced the film and took a picture. Amazingly it clicked. Not only was there film in the camera, but the battery still worked after all this time.
Curiosity had me have the film developed. The few pictures that turned out were a good reflection of his interests: a writing spider web, raccoon in the yard, an owl that looked to be perched somewhere in his house and his companion, Carmen. The quality wasn’t good but it’s like a fine line connection to him.
It started me thinking of my family’s involvement with cameras and pictures. Mother was the director and Dad was the producer and operator of the 8mm home movies and black and white photos from their first box Kodak.
Before those we have family pictures dating back to the 1800s of the unsmiling formally posed family portraits. Well, most of them are like that. There is one of a patriarch with grey beard, no coat, sitting under a large tree with several other people including a young black girl in gingham dress head covered with small braids. My grandmother did my hair that way on one summer visit when she couldn’t stand it being in my eyes anymore.
Whatever started the interest both of my brothers and I had cameras and used them starting in the 1950s. I think Lee and Larry were more selective with what they took pictures of. I myself have a tendency, a neurosis my children would say, to want to record anything and everything. My son and his two boys together because he does not live with them and I want them to see what they all three mean to each other. My daughter and her son so he can look back at the many smiles he and his single mom shared although raising him alone was stressful at times. My mother and her great grandchildren so they will have some memory of her. And just about anything else I see.
And, yes, spider webs. Just as one of Larry’s last pictures was the spider web in the early morning light I took pictures of spider webs on a bush early one day last week. Maybe I appreciate finding his camera at this time because he died when he was 62. And I just turned 62. Carpe diem!
I unsnapped the back of the case to find a 35 mm Konica with manual settings. I advanced the film and took a picture. Amazingly it clicked. Not only was there film in the camera, but the battery still worked after all this time.
Curiosity had me have the film developed. The few pictures that turned out were a good reflection of his interests: a writing spider web, raccoon in the yard, an owl that looked to be perched somewhere in his house and his companion, Carmen. The quality wasn’t good but it’s like a fine line connection to him.
It started me thinking of my family’s involvement with cameras and pictures. Mother was the director and Dad was the producer and operator of the 8mm home movies and black and white photos from their first box Kodak.
Before those we have family pictures dating back to the 1800s of the unsmiling formally posed family portraits. Well, most of them are like that. There is one of a patriarch with grey beard, no coat, sitting under a large tree with several other people including a young black girl in gingham dress head covered with small braids. My grandmother did my hair that way on one summer visit when she couldn’t stand it being in my eyes anymore.
Whatever started the interest both of my brothers and I had cameras and used them starting in the 1950s. I think Lee and Larry were more selective with what they took pictures of. I myself have a tendency, a neurosis my children would say, to want to record anything and everything. My son and his two boys together because he does not live with them and I want them to see what they all three mean to each other. My daughter and her son so he can look back at the many smiles he and his single mom shared although raising him alone was stressful at times. My mother and her great grandchildren so they will have some memory of her. And just about anything else I see.
And, yes, spider webs. Just as one of Larry’s last pictures was the spider web in the early morning light I took pictures of spider webs on a bush early one day last week. Maybe I appreciate finding his camera at this time because he died when he was 62. And I just turned 62. Carpe diem!
