My Grandma was a Gray Lady hospital volunteer.(The term "Gray Ladies" refers to American Red Cross volunteers who for many years provided friendly, personal services of a non-medical nature to sick, injured, and disabled patients in American hospitals, other health-care facilities, and private homes. Their work ranged from writing letters, reading, tutoring, and shopping for patients to serving as guides to visitors and as hostesses in hospital recreation rooms and at information desks. Gray Ladies also provided hospitality services in Red Cross Blood Centers and joined forces with other Red Cross workers in caring for disaster victims.) She just turned 88 in January. She was diagnosed with lung cancer about a year ago and now the doctors can't find any cancer in her body or explain why it's gone. She's a medical miracle!
They are a couple of pretty cool people.
Now, this has kind of veered off track from the subject of photography, so let's try and bring it back around to that. It's hard to find photos like these old film prints today. Even with Photoshop it's tough to recreate the look and feel of going back in time these old photos convey. Somehow the lighting, the colors, and especially the people are just...different. I can't really say these pictures remind me, personally of "the good old days" because I'm only 28 and my my first real camera was a Canon Rebel 2000.
I used that camera for a high school photography class where I was a teaching assistant because the class didn't quite fit into my schedule, but I really wanted to take it. So I went part time and did all the assignments for no grade. It actually turned out to be a pretty sweet deal. From there, I want to college and my parents got me my first digital camera and it even shot video! (which was a big deal in 2001...I think.) It was a Fujifilm FinePix 4800Zoom. While it may not have necessarily helped my photographic career all that much it definitely was great for recording my friends and I doing stuff we probably shouldn't have in our dorm and around campus at Michigan State. Not sure what happened to that camera now that I think about it....
This is getting a little long-winded, so time to wrap it up. I guess the point of all this is photographs are the single best way to archive memories of everything important (and not so important) in your life. I have old cameras and old people ;-) in my life that all have a lot of great stories associated with them and all give me inspiration and drive to go out and shoot more pictures and create more memories for down the road. Go take a picture of someone in your life today and hang on to it Put it away, keep it through all your moves in life and pull it out in 20 years. See what you remember about it then.
