A fish eye view of photography

photography studio of the past

I’ve spent some of today uploading photos to my smugmug account, made much faster with the use of Firefox as a browser. I learned to frame photos through the view-finder, load film onto carriers and process the film through the various wet pans in the dark room. Then, on to print with a remarkable variety of papers. That was about ten years ago–and a fancy camera was digital with automatic F-stop adjustment.

In my youth, not all families had cameras and if they did, the father carried it and was in charge of deeming important photos. Film was expensive and flash even more so–and so there was the inevitable photo-taking outside facing the sun with the impossible order to not squint.

Now, it seems that everyone has a camera–on their phone –or those awful ipads–huge tablets held up to take photos and blocking the view of anyone standing behind. Framing a photo is a thing of the past–and all the work in producing a print as simple as emailing the files to a local pharmacy or general merchandise store.

Still, I think it is good to ponder upon the past and wonder what will happen in the future to what we now consider