The overwhelming need to reduce the amount of stuff in my life has inspired me to clean out everything. For the past two weeks I have been migrating from room to room with 10 gallon trash bags slung over my shoulder. Nothing is safe. Broken clock that may or may not be repairable? Trash. Wrinkled re-purposed gift bags? Trash. Kids artwork? Photograph THEN trash it.  Its all going to be gone by the end of summer. I know I will be left with a lot of echoey empty rooms but I’m OK with that.  Wouldn’t it be nice to finally share the AFTER photos (here are the before) after two full years of complaining about how unorganized my home is? Yeah it would.

Last week I reached the corner of the living room where all my camera gear gathers in a mass of equipment and accessories. I spotted my old Canon Rebel G, it was my first SLR camera and my last that depended solely on film (aside from my Polaroids) I bought it in 1996 when I was pregnant with the now 15 year old. Oh how I loved that camera, it weighed only 14 ounces WITH batteries. I never had a bad print come out of that camera.  I used to order return address labels in bulk for my Costco development envelopes, did you ever do that when you turned in a handful of rolls? I still have all those prints organized by year in photo boxes just waiting for the scrapbook weekend where I was going to catch up on everything that never happened. I decided to sell scrapbooking supplies instead of actually making my scrapbooks but that’s another story for another day. Ten years later I bought the DSRL Rebel XT.

Unlike books I don’t throw out unused or aging cameras, of course not! I popped open the back and scrambled to close it as quickly as possible!!! OMGeeeeee there was film in there! By sheer luck I had batteries that fit the camera so I fired it up and behold it worked and was ready for the next exposure. I immediately went outside and fired off the rest of the roll. I immediately sent the roll off to PhotoworksSF the prints arrived yesterday.

Oh happy day. The roll included a few baby photos of the six year old.

2006

Be still my beating heart.

I was really pleased at the quality of the prints and the digital scans (I opted to have a CD created so I could easily share them here on the blog). Rummaging through old bins I found an envelope filled with negatives and one contact sheet from 1983. Cost on the envelope? $10.95. I paid LESS THAN THAT today for my roll to be developed with a contact sheet, set of prints and a CD 26 years later. Crazy.  Film is certainly cost prohibited considering all you ned now is a memory card but I can’t find the words to explain the gratification you feel when you get your first look at your prints. I was so happy I took photos of them and text them to my husband. Seriously you would have thought I won the lottery. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t nearly as excited as I was.

I started a new Flickr Set to include just Film shots. I also bought 8 more rolls of film because there is something magical about film, its helped me slow down tremendously and curb my desire to overshoot. Speaking of film, I will be sharing more about my adventures in celluloid over the summer, armed with my dusted off Rebel I also unearthed an AE-1 and I have a roll in there right now ready to be sent off.  In the meantime we at Mortal Muses created a new group on Flickr Film Friday where you can add your film photos, any medium as long as its film are welcome. We are really excited about expanding into areas like film and Mobile Photography when we relaunch our redesigned blog next month so stay tuned for that.

Here is the rest of the roll you can click any image to see it full size.