A Sad Day For Old School Photographers

Today is a very sad day for those of us who cut our teeth on old photo technology. And no, by "old technology" I am not referring to the dark ages of lowly 5 megapixel digital cameras and Windows XP. I am talking about a very long forgotten thing that many of you reading this have probably never heard of called "film." For the uninitiated, film is this weird brownish-green plastic stuff we used to use in our cameras before SD cards were invented. It required processing in dark rooms using chemicals and clocks and stuff. It was fun and lots of naughty stuff happened in those dark rooms during high school and college that we won't talk about here. But suffice to say that if you have a weird name like Nikkor or Olympus, your parents probably spent a lot of time in the darkroom.

So to the bad news - after a run of nearly 75 years, Eastman Kodak announced today that they are going to discontinue Kodachrome film.

Although I have been shooting digital exclusively for over ten years, this still comes as an absolute shock to me. I mean, I also stopped eating Peter Pan peanut butter several years ago but I always expect it to be there, in back of my cabinet, just in case I get the craving for a PBJ. Of course, I doubt that I will ever want one; I just like having that option. And the same goes for film. I don't want to use it, I merely want the option "just in case."

I know I'm the problem. In fact, I have a Canon AE-1 Program, a couple Argus rangefinders and several other relics sitting on my shelf collecting dust. Sure, I look at them every morning and romanticize about taking them out and popping off a few rolls of film. Then I think about having to get the film processed at a photo lab since I no longer have a darkroom and the fact that I won't be able to adjust the white balance, levels, and curves in Photoshop. And they sit another day.

So with a tear in my eye and light meter in my shirt pocket, I bid a final farewell to my old friend, Kodak Kodachrome. May you rest in peace.

Remembering Emily

I was in the process of writing my first entry for this blog when I got a phone call informing me of some terrible news: my friend Freddy Eddy’s beloved Lhasa Apso, Emily, had passed away.

Like myself - and probably you if you are reading this - Fred is a true animal lover. So I am sure you will understand when I say that Emily was definitely not a “pet,” she was part of his family. I cannot recall a single conversation we have had over the past several years in which Fred didn’t talk about Emily. She was a beautiful dog with an unbelievably sweet temperament. Emily was very fortunate in that she got to go to work with Fred every single day and she was always the first to greet you when you walked into Fred’s store. She was the perfect companion.

And she was a rescue dog.

Fred is a HUGE believer in adopting from the Animal shelter rather than buying from puppy mills. In the twenty five years that we have been friends, he has given several rescue dogs a new lease on life because many of them would have been euthanized if he didn’t adopt them.

Emily was a wonderful dog and will be sorely missed by all of us who knew her.