The Missing Years
I took a lot of pictures in 1969, 1970, and especially 1971. They’re all gone now. Almost all of them were black and white shot on Kodak Tri-X pan 400, usually boosted to 1600. Poof. Nada. No more. Not having a darkroom in the USAF was a factor. Youthful energy and taking life for granted were others. I stopped taking photos in 1972…well, I started again for a bit when I lived in Iceland in the mid-70s but only a few survive. I tried video in the 1990s but software was crazy so I did little but convert video to DVDs. Most of them are gone, too.
Why am I bringing this up? Well, I started down the rabbit hole of finding pictures of benches (from yesterday’s post). Talk about a time sponge!! Wow. I do delete a lot of photos but still have almost 200,000 in my archives. In the 90s I was trying to capture the first years of our children. It wasn’t a real hobby then, I was busy with kids, law, work, etc., etc., etc. My sister-in-law is a photographer, I admired her photos and her sense of seeing. She inspired me to get serious about photography in the early 2000s…so I ditched my point and shoot (it WAS a good one!) and got a digital DSLR. I haven’t looked back. I digress.
I managed to get through 2007 in my archives. Talk about the Way Back Machine firing up…young kids (babies), young friends, exotic places, normal places. Parents, family, friends long gone. Was I ever that young? Skinny? It was fun and sad to peer into the past and have so many memories triggered.
It dawned on me that my 20s and 30s were completely missing. With the exception of a handful of images from Iceland, I’ve no record of me in those years. Well, I do have a couple of snapshots of me in the F-16 with my dad in 1983. I also have an Air Force magazine with a photo of me and my OV-10 in 1979. And I still have my pilot training tiger shot. So, including Iceland, I have maybe 24 pictures of me in those 20 years. I did have two failed relationships in those years and I’m sure that had something to do with no pix. In truth, I don’t want to trigger any of those memories. Smile.
Back to benches…I’ve found a few images in the early years of my rekindled hobby, but mostly with kids sitting on them. Nowadays, when I find a bench on a walkabout or even on just a regular outing, I imagine someone sitting on it and looking at this little slice of the world in front of them. If my imagination has the traction, I imagine their warmth on the seat of the bench and their thoughts as they look out at the same things I’m seeing. And then I’m glad for the memory and smile.