Photographs

      I started taking pictures in 1966 when I was twelve.  My sisters were graduating to Instamatic cameras, and they passed down their Brownie Starmite. 

It used “126” film and shot square photos. 

     At sixteen, our Explorer Scout leader sold me his Minolta 101 single-lens reflex camera with two lenses for $75. I shot a bunch of rolls of Kodachrome, especially during our Explorer Scout Virgin Islands sailing trip

  But I was thinking bigger.  I had heard that Japanese cameras could be had for less in the Virgin Islands and I brought cash. I had enough for a Nikkormat single-lens reflex camera body, with an in-camera light meter (!), which I purchased there for $105. Back at home, I bought a 50-mm lens and a 105-mm lens for it and took pictures with this camera for many years, finally giving it up in the 1990’s for a better Nikon SLR.

       My brother Mark, with whom I've had a fun arms race on almost everything was the first to go digital, and I ended up with a cool Canon 5d Mk 2, though I'm told by my tech-savvy son that it's obsolete.  

       I drowned so many small digital cameras on kayak and camping trips that I gave up and started buying waterproof ones.  During the years when we did more scuba diving, I bought a Nikonos underwater camera and shot many rolls of film.  ("MORE underwater pictures?!")

       So, with all of these cameras through the years, I must have taken some outstanding pictures, right?  Unfortunately, the majority of photos taken by the majority of people are pretty mediocre, and usually just serve to help them remember important people and moments in their lives.  It is estimated that between 4.1 billion and 4.7 billion photos are taken every day; that’s 47,564 per second!  About 95% are taken with digital phones, and this percentage becomes greater every year.  

       I just checked, and right now (February 2024) I have well over 100,000 photographs saved on my hard drive, from the 1940’s to the present, including many Kodachromes from those early years that were still bright and clear when I scanned them several years ago.  Digital storage makes the preservation of so many pictures too easy, and many (most?) should be tossed.

     That said, there are some that should be saved, and grabbed as I leave the burning building.  Ancestors long gone need to be remembered and honored.

     I could hope, perhaps in vain, that a few of the less-homely shots of me might be passed down.  While I’m still here, there are images that sharpen and sometimes correct my memories of sweet and important moments in my life, a life that has been pretty good to this point.  

Sure, there might be a few among the stacks that others might appreciate; that shot of a Hatteras sunset, 

or that one of the glacier on Mt. Huaytapallana with tiny figures descending, 

that macro shot of coral polyps in Bonaire.  

But those are the tiny minority.  The important ones are quietly held, and taken out from time to time.  They speak to me of things eternal, of growth and progress in this phase of existence, of precious moments frozen in bits and bytes that echo feelings of love and laughter, of times when I could run a little faster, when there were a few less beautiful wrinkles on the face of my love.

Those are the ones that matter.

Dave