Unprinted

1982-3 Konica Auto S2

There was that stack of 4x6 prints that came back from every roll after a patient wait of a week, maybe two. Twenty-four or thirty-six of them, plus a second set for whoever you wanted to share the moment with. Clark. Seattle Film Works, big labs. Sometimes you wanted them fast. Walgreens would have them to you in an hour!  You put them in albums, stuck the best ones to the refrigerator with magnets, and for the really good ones, you had them enlarged and framed and hung somewhere that mattered.

I wanted to be a photographer when I was a kid. Not just someone who took pictures on a Kodak 126 Instamatic or even a 110 (wow were those grainy at 4x6!) — a photographer. I read the books, waited anxiously for the latest issue of Popular Photography, studied the gear, poured over the advertisements, even shot with my uncle who was a pro and developed prints in his own studio. I won ribbons at the Illinois State Fair for my 4-H projects. I had a Konica Auto S2, a late-60s rangefinder that taught me everything I know about light, about framing. When I was in 8th grade, my dad and I bought a used Pentax ME Super SLR. It was a dream come true! Photography wasn't going to be my career — I think my parents and teachers knew my talents were better engaged in other pursuits — but it was intertwined with how I saw the world. I wanted, no, I needed to capture it.

I resisted digital longer than most. My friend Bryn brought a Canon PowerShot to France while I packed a Pentax film SLR, and for a while I could honestly say my prints were sharper, could enlarge larger, were just better. Eventually that stopped being true, and I caved — a Kodak superzoom with real exposure control, good white balance, terrible high ISO. I shared travel photos via Picasa, sent travelogue emails to friends, kept the ritual of it. For twenty years I moved photos from card to hard drive to hard drive, computer to computer, dutifully carrying the archive forward.

Unprinted photo

I now have 200,000 photographs. Probably many more than that. And I have little to show for them — nothing tangible printed in nearly a decade, nothing on a refrigerator. Sharing with friends is a process of sharing a photo from a trip, them giving a Thumbs Up, and that’s the end of the journey. There is no frame. There is no refrigerator that bears witness. What I have is a phone I flip through at the brewery, trying to skip past the embarrassing ones while hunting for a single decent selfie to show friends. Two hundred thousand moments, and I'm scrolling past them in a bar.

That's not photography.

I'm retired now, which means I have no more excuses. I've started going back through the archive. I'm learning darktable, improving my composition and post-processing, trying to become the photographer I told myself I'd be someday. The work is at imatalossforwords.com if you want to follow along.

But more than the processing, more than the software — I'm going to print. I'm going to put something on a wall. I'm going to create the tangible.