Tangible History

            As soon as Jenna returned home from school yesterday, Roland and I went to a neighbor's house to pick apples.  Jenna did not wish to go.  Instead, she started on some homework she had.  When I returned, she asked me to help her with a specific topic.  She had been assigned to write about an invention and had picked cameras as her topic.  Oh, yes.  What a great historical item.  

            My first suggestion to her was to make a comment on the straight faces that are seen in so many old photographs.  No one is smiling.  They all look serious.  Cameras seemed to be a lot heavier and bulkier back then.  It would take the photographer a huge amount of time just to set up his equipment and even longer to capture the pose.

            Jenna had taken a journey through camera timeline and did have a paragraph which was overly boring.  Cameras are fun.  The history of cameras is fascinating.  I showed her that she could take notes from a YouTube video if she didn't want to read.  Pep up your paper.  Put some life into it.  Interview Uncle Bill who is a professional photographer.  

            I told her about some of the cameras I had possessed during my lifetime.  And the lawsuit between Polaroid and Kodak and how I had to give up my Colorburst camera and my thinnest camera ever was the Kodak disc.  I told her how many pictures I could expect to get out of one roll of film.  I forgot about the stupid flash attachments that were needed for earlier cameras.  The people of the early 19th century had to wait for long periods of time to capture a moment.  Today we have instantaneous selfies and the capability of sharing them on social media within seconds after they are taken.

            I'm excited to help her with this project.  Of course, I am more excited than she is.  For her, it's work.  For me, it's a new blog subject.  Well, not really.  I have mentioned a few of my cameras in various posts.  My latest arrival came yesterday while I was removing grapes from there stem (we still have one large bucket left) though I did not get many better pictures of our grape transformation as the battery was being charged for a good part of the process.  But now, thanks to Corey, I now have this kind of camera

which came in this really cool drawstring bag.  

 So future posts should have better pictures and not just cell phone fuzz.  Looking forward.