Black and White

My first camera was a simple box camera, plastic, with a silvery cavity for a flash bulb.  I think my mom sent away for it: 50 cents and a box top back in the very late 1960s. My best friend Cindy got the very same camera, if memory serves me. That summer, our moms were 4-H leaders in a pilot photography project, and Cindy and I started down the path of learning the basics of photography.

Everything was black and white back in those days. I don't know if Kodak (because it was all Kodak back then) even made color film for that camera. If Kodak did, black and white film would have been infinitely cheaper both to buy and to process. Besides, as a 4-Her, we were not allowed to use color film in Photography 1. Oh no: only black and white. (Color film was not allowed under Photography 3 or 4 back then.)

So everything was shot in black and white. Paul Simon to the contrary, everything looked good in black and white. Eventually, I started using my dad's 35mm camera (he had brought it home from Japan in 1954) and I remember the thrill of using Tri-X film: still black and white, but faster, for action shots. Tri-X was grainier when you shot landscapes; I loved that aspect of it too. In those long past days, by my last years in 4-H and high school, I learned to develop my own film (black and white). I bought an old used enlarger and took over my grandmother's bathroom every few Saturdays to develop and print my own work.

That was real magic. There was the tang of chemicals in the air, there was the magic of sliding a piece of exposed photographic paper into the developer tray and watching the images form out of nothing under the water. It was like watching dreams develop.

Eventually, of course, color came. Fuji film came, 4-H let us shoot and exhibit in color, and black and white faded away in my albums. It was all color all the time.

Fast forward to the digital era, in which I have been participating for not quite a decade now. Everything is color. Bigger, brighter, my god, look at the detail (and I just have a simple point and shoot).

Until this week. This week is when my brother Mark tagged me on Facebook: seven days of black and white photos, ordinary items, no titles, no explanations. Go.

It took me a half hour of fooling with the camera to find how to do black and white. But I figured it out and I have been posting black and white photos.

My friend Cindy—the very same Cindy—and I have been emailing back and forth about the experience for the last few days:

          April: LOTS of memories. LOTS AND LOTS of memories--remember early 4-H when we only did black and white? I forgot (until I was changing the colors on my camera) how beautiful it can be. How dreamy.  I MISS FILM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

         Cindy: I have been seeing the black & whites!  Love them!!!  I remember you developing black & white pictures in the bathroom on Flax street!!!  Remember that?!!!!

         April: Oh yeah! I couldn't sleep last night and so started thinking about film and I thought all about Flax Street. It was magic to watch those photos form out of the air.  Am really, really intrigued with dropping back into black and white world. 

         Cindy: YES, Black & White World!!! 

So here I am, back in black and white world for a few days. Maybe for longer. It has been so long since I have shot just for the heck of it. Most of my shots these days are "occasions:" the kids home, a Symphony rehearsal. Maybe a few garden shots here and there, but a lot of time the camera stays in its pouch, up in my study.

But black and white? Just ordinary everyday things? I can do that. I may keep doing that.

And it is still dreamy.