There I Fixed It #3

This week's photo came to me like a blast from the past!  While sorting some photographic equipment that I have not used for some time, I came across a negative sleeve of 120 film.  My curiousity got the best of me so I took the negatives to my friend and print maker, Bob, at Image N That Photo Processing. He scanned the negatives for me and I discovered that most of the photos where taken of an old shed, likely owned by a hoarder/ collector.  

The images on the roll showed a variety of vintage advertising memorabilia acquired by this hoarder over a long period of time.  Most of it looked like it came from local businesses that had disappeared many years ago. Perhaps he collected theses pieces to preserve his memories of these special places now long forgotten within his community.

As I studied these images which were taken about six to eight years ago, I recalled that I had just purchased a  Rollicord Twin Lens Reflex Camera at an estate sale and I was likely checking out that old camera.  Looking back, it was probably fitting that the first subjects photographed by this old camera were peers from the same decade as the camera itself.  Maybe it was fate that allowed this old camera to preserve some artifacts from a society that no longer exists -- an act not unlike the hoarder.

This is the one of the six photos that caught my eye.  Since the scan had produced a digital negative, I chose to process them with an old version of NIK software using a Panatomic X Film simulation.  From the other negatives, I could see that I was struggling with the way the camera reverses images in its waist level viewfinder.  It's a wonder that I got five recognizable images from that roll of twelve frames.  Today it is so much easier and cheaper to produce a decent photo.  Knowing that fact makes me stand in awe of photographers like Vivian Maier and Robert Capa who composed and shot so many frames so quickly and precisely the first time.

While Jim Croce poetically sang of keeping time in a bottle, this hoarder decided to keep it stored outdoors around his shed.  I guess we all have our unique ways of trying to hold on to the past. However, I liked the way that nature patiently and persistently intervened over the years covering the vintage pieces with vines and sapplings while the grandfather clock continued to rest against the shed for its support.  Life presses onward, and as Tolstoy wrote, " Two of the most powerful warriors are patience and time."