Finding Old Negatives
After I left for college, I never went back to my family home. Years passed, and I never looked back. Then one day, my folks told me that they were selling the house. What was the point of keeping the old house when none of us lived there anymore.
But then, my folks asked me if I wanted any of my old possessions - junk essentially - that I still had in my room. There really wasn’t much. Just some assorted classical music vinyls, my old year books, collection of fashion magazines, and clothes of yesteryear. Naturally, I told my parents to donate what was donate-able and then throw away the rest. And before you ask, yes, I regret of not keeping my vinyls.
Strangely, my folks saved an envelope of negatives that I had. How fortuitous. They were photos I took during my days at Parsons Paris. It really was a blast from the past.
Nikon FA + Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AI-S + Kodak Gold 100
Nikon FA + Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AI-S + Kodak Gold 100
I have to admit that I didn’t take good care of my negatives over the years. Moving around year after year followed by the migration from analog to digital imaging took its toll on my poor archiving skills. Thing is, back in those days, many of us were just recreational photographers. We took the photos, had the negatives developed, and got our prints back from the photomat. After that, we just kind of stuck our negatives in an envelope and forgot about them.
It’s funny now that I think about our treatment of negatives back in the day. It’s almost as if our archiving efforts back then with our recreational photos were just as bad as our archiving efforts in the present with our smart phone photos. Of course, the only difference now is that our smart phone photos can be immediately saved on a cloud the moment we take the photo - taking away the risk of ever losing the image in a pile of scattered envelopes tucked away in some forgotten desktop drawer.
But then, there is something so special about finding old negatives. It’s like a treasure trove of memories requiring a key to unlock it. In this case, it’s a negative scanner. And after we scan those recreational photos, we realize that we took them just as badly as we take recreational photos on a smart phone. I mean, truly awful for the most part.
Nikon FA + Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AI-S + Kodak Gold 100
Nikon FA + Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AI-S + Kodak Gold 100
Nikon FA + Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AI-S + Kodak Gold 100
Obviously, the question begging to be answered is why we take such technically and compositionally better film photos today? Simply, all I can say is this. Only now, with analog film going gently into that goodnight, do we realize how precious film is, and that every frame really does count. So, we take film photos with much better care than we ever did before.
So, do I regret of my past negligence in taking film photos without any due care? Not really. As you can see, most of these photos are of my friends and classmates back then doing what they did naturally. They were all living the moment - inviting me to take photos of them. There were no expectations for them to pose. It was just them exposing the best version of themselves to me. For that reason, I cherish these photos - even now in our perverse high resolution and detail definition era of super sharp digital imaging.
That said, would I have taken better photos, if I had taken them with a contemporary digital camera? Probably. That would’ve been the law of averages, given that my storage card would not be limited to 36 exposure. Plus, I could always chimp my shots in review. But then again, with all my photos saved and migrated to an endless cycle of upgraded hard drives and then finally up into the cloud, I wouldn’t have had this unexpected treasure trove to unlock in the present.
Nikon FA + Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AI-S + Kodak Gold 100. When friends don’t cooperate in a low light situation.
I can’t believe how long ago that was. I suppose that is the power of photos with personal meaning to us. It brings us back to a time. And I suppose, it also offers us some perspective, in contrasting that captured moment in the past with the way our lives turned out in the present. I really cannot believe that so much time has passed, and that I am the person that I am today.
Seeing the way I was in the past, in how these photos were taken, makes me want to revive some part of me that has since departed from my being. But like many of us, that feeling of what-can-be is fleeting the moment we resurface back to the present. Oh well, at least that part of me was captured and saved for posterity.
