Photography. I think I fell in love the first time I walked into that 1 hour mini lab way back in December 1994. It was just after I finished school and worked at this mini lab during weekends and holidays for about a year and a half. The equipment was old and this was back in the day way before all this digital stuff. The days of 135mm and 110mm cameras. All film. It was at this time that I bought my very first compact zoom camera. I didn't really know what I was doing, but it was so cool when I bought that camera - had to save up quite a bit too. Can't even remember what brand it was.
Oh the stories I could tell from those days...
Like the time I thought there was a problem with my printer, trying to load paper and it wouldn't and I was about to phone my boss (an hour away) to come and sort it out because we would have a busy Sunday ahead when somebody asked "did you switch it on?" - duh!
Or the time the electricity went down and I had to stand there like an idiot slowly and manually turning the handle attached to the negative processor so they could finish processing without forever being ruined - because you know, if there is a set of negatives that will be permanently damaged it would be somebody's wedding photos or baby's first birthday or great grandma's 90th who just came visiting from overseas. Never with the random drunken snapshots all blurry and heads cut off.
Or the the way people didn't realise you look at their photos (as part of the quality checking) and they took some naked photos of themselves at a drunken party and they are usually the people who would be back within an hour.
Or the time somebody came with the film all wrapped around the camera asking if you could print it for them "uhm, nothing will come out, it is totally exposed to the light" "can you try?" "uhm..."
Or like the time the town where I lived had snow for the first time in like forever, what a nightmare. I was so overworked and my machine so incredibly slow. It wasn't like the fancy digital printing like you have today, no once you have your negative, you have to push it through this slot and through this tiny little window and your negative lit up with a light, you have to make decisions about the printing quality.
Oh those were the days :-). But I developed a great passion and even looked at buying my own mini lab - not that that would have been all that feasible. Especially nowadays where most of us don't print photos anymore and we just rely on digital copies somewhere on a computer or a phone (I'll write more about this in another post).
I remember the day I printed photos for a girl who was at my school earlier on and I remember seeing her photos as I printed it - a new baby and oh how proud the parents were. But then before the end of that film, baby had passed away. And it broke my heart. And yes, one would think how incredibly difficult to have photos of a baby who died, but those memories will forever be incredibly special and treasured for her. I guess that was the start of where I realised just how important photography is. Those memories that you can never again have, moments that passed. Good or bad, they are all memories and part of what makes us the people we are.
The thing I realised was that we really just have today, so take out your phone, take out your camera and get going. And if you want something a little more fancy let people like myself help you along the way. There are different packages to suit different budgets and let us help you create some great memories. Take a first birthday for instance, instead of you running around with camera in hand, you can now sit back and actually be in the photos!
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