Every once in awhile
I take on the challenge from a youngster who has exhibited to
her or his parents a serious desire to take more than just snapshots
of some friends doing goofy things -- please bear with me as I
write using my 54 year old brain. In this case, I had the opportunity
to go along and apply myself using the same equipment under the
same circumstances (except for the height difference, although
it wasn't much of a difference) concerning lighting and opportunity
to see if what I had taught the young person would work with a
simple $5 reuseable 35mm film camera.
We both used the same brand and quality ISO 100 film, neither
of us had the convenience of selectable apertures or shutterspeeds,
or filters, however we both had built-in flashes, but neither
of us used them. My small friend had recently bought his camera
new at a local retail store, whereas I still had mine from a purchase
I made about 6 years ago on a whim -- I didn't even know if mine
still worked. But just to check, I did look through the open back
of the camera at the back of the lens as I tripped the shutter
release to check if the action still worked. I subsequently hoped
for the best.
The results you see by following the links from the thumbnails
on the next page are 9 images from my 24-exposure roll of film.
You will only see 5 photos, as one image is five photos stitched
together, and another is two stitched, and the remaining frames
of the roll fell to the cutting room floor to either a sticky
shutter release (6 years and $5 will sometimes do that to your
seldom used equipment), and a few others were duplicates expended
while I experimented waiting for the clouds to improve in the
background.
As for my young student? What can I say? I answered many questions
as to why I was bending and making faces ("old and hurting"
were my standard responses, which made him laugh and brought joy
to my heart), and others as to why I was waiting so long to take
an obviously easy picture to capture (waiting for that perfect
moment, or waiting for a bird to fly into the scene, or waiting
for the boardwalk to quit bouncing from someone running when they
shouldn't be). In other words, the hands-on lesson was meaningful
and enjoyable for us all -- I was proud to see the photos he posted
to his website. In the end, his experiment in what he had learned
about Composition from my Beginner's Series Books
served him well. And, I learned that I need to buy a new $5 camera
for the next 5 year period, as 6 years seems to have been a risk
less taken.
So, thanks for reading this. Now you can take a look at some
of the fun I had at Lettuce Lake State Park near Tampa, Florida.
