Like Father Like Daughter

This is an older post –circa 2015– from a previous blog, but it’s worth re-sharing. Like father, like daughter, Megan still does photo walks, still has her digital camera, not so much into film but that’s fine. When I can peel her away from Minecraft, she still likes photo walks and spending time with me.I’ve been trying to get my daughter into the wonderful world of film photography. We take cameras with us now when we do our walks around the lake. I really didn’t expect much enthusiasm from her. Let’s face it, the idea of having to take a limited number of pictures without having instant results is just torture to a ten year old’s mind. The first time we went out with film cameras, I let her use my Canon 7 rangefinder. This proved to be a mistake. It was dusk, she had no flash, and my supposedly simple explanation of scale focusing and the exposure triangle wasn’t breaking through the Monster High Doll barrier. It did, however, lead to her developing her first roll of Tri-X. Unfortunately, every shot was a blur. The Canon 7 is now her nemesis.

Then came the Vivitar Pink. What a piece of crap! Actually, it was a Vivitar Gold and then a Pink, both being injection-molded garbage not even suitable for Lomography. The film winding post spins freely while requiring the toothed advancing gear to do all the work; winding the film with the blister-master thumb wheel is a painful exercise in futility that inevitably leads to torn film. Both cameras — and I use that term loosely — are now in a toy pile somewhere writing the script for Toy Story 4: The Land of Abandoned Junk.Which brings us to our latest adventure, the Unexpected Outing. After much chagrin and a renewed interest in sharing film photography with Dear Daughter, I took a brand new roll of Fuji CN200 and loaded it into the Yashica Zoom 70 I got at Thrift City for $0.98. I informed her I had loaded a new “auto everything point and shoot” camera with film and she could go burn through a roll in the front yard. Out I went to watch her snap away. She’s totally the cutest thing ever. She has not mastered the art of winking, so she uses her left hand finger, in this strange acrobatic act of pinning her eyelid shut so she can see through the viewfinder.Outside am I, in my bare feet, shorts that I’m having to hold up (I had just got home from work), and she walks down to the edge of the driveway and says “walk with me, dad.” So off we go, heading towards the lake Gazebo, me wincing at the pain in my calves from walking barefoot after age 40; Meg pointing out that she walks barefooted all the time and doesn’t complain. We had fun talking about cameras, then some boys kept calling her name and she became instantly embarrassed. I told her not to worry, that I’d kill them before they made it to the front door to ask for her anyway. There would be no embarrassment…or bodies. On the walk back, she told me — in between my groaning about my calves — that she loved me. Then she asked if she could scan her negatives when we got back. Being a photographer and collector is cool. Being a dad rocks.