Getting Started: Part One
My family is full of photographers. It’s kind of our thing. Some pursue it professionally, some just as a hobby, but between my dad, his three siblings, and several of my cousins, we have an abundance of family photos.
My dad used to have a Minolta 35mm camera. When he finished a roll of film, he would take it to Miller’s Drug Store and have it developed. I would watch the pharmacist or the clerk fill out the envelope, tear off the top, and hand us the numbered ticket that was meant to be our claim to the pictures. We never really needed it though, because they knew us by name. I’m pretty sure dad went to school with most of the people in town.
Those few days of waiting for his pictures to come back were always long. As a child, it was like waiting for Christmas. My anticipation to see what came back from that roll of film was always strong. It was excruciating to go back to the drug store to find out they weren’t back yet. But the day they came back was exciting. After supper, once the table was cleaned, dad would always take the pictures out, take the negatives out, and begin numbering the back of each picture. He had this simple numbering system that was really only his initial, the date, and the corresponding number on the negative. If he needed reprints, he automatically knew which negative to ask for. It was simple, but seemed like he was writing out some sophisticated code, or the key to a complex puzzle. To me, watching dad go through this routine, made me feel like he was the best photographer in the world. And in those simple moments, at the little round table in our kitchen, photography rooted itself deep in my soul.
When I was old enough, Dad took me to a pawn shop and we picked out a used Minolta 35mm camera just like his. It came with an olive green camera bag trimmed out with fake leather. I still have that bag and my camera. I still have my dad’s cameras. I’m pretty sure I’ll pass them all on to my children one day. Monitarily, they’re not worth much; nothing really. But to me, they hold a lifetime of memories. They take me back to when I was just a little girl, sitting at our round kitchen table, thinking that her daddy was the most handsome, best photographer in the world.
