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The Photos We Take
15 June 2023
When we read Mixbook's survey of phonographers that found 80 percent never look at the photos they take, we weren't surprised. But we should have been. We just didn't think about it carefully enough.
Guardian Angels. Angelo (left) and Mario captured with a Canon Rebel XTi and 18-55mm kit lens at 40mm (64mm equivalent), f6.3, 1/100 second and ISO 100.
You take a picture of something that attracts you. You chimp. You like it or you don't. You share it if it embarrasses someone you love. You forget about it otherwise.
It's more a social interaction than a photograph. Looking at it again would be like telling the same story about what you and your friend did over and over again. Life moves too fast for that.
FAIR QUESTIONS
But "Do you look at your photos?" isn't a bad question. Nor is "Do you print your photos?"
The other day, we found ourselves answering, "Yes!" to both questions.
AN OLD PHOTO
In 2007 our nephews, who were just tikes then, visited our estate and romped around the garden, arming themselves with green plant stakes for their swashbuckling adventures against the bees, the rolly pollies, the hummingbirds, the blue jays and whatever else moved back there.
We got a photo of them brandishing their weapons with big smiles. It's just adorable.
We made a 13x19 inch print for Mom not long after and she put it up on the wall in her den where it has hung ever since.
YEARS LATER
Sixteen years later she's rehabbing in a skilled nursing facility and we're upgrading to M2 Ventura, trying to think of something to print to test our printer migration from Intel Monterey.
The two were not unrelated. Twenty years ago (about) when Dad was rehabbing at St. Mary's, the staff encourage us to mount family pictures on the wall. So we did. And they cheered up Dad immensely, particularly one in which one of our nephews played dead on the living room rug.
But at the SNF there are absolutely no photos on the wall. We checked all 300 rooms (more or less) while reporting for this story. There are framed but faded art prints on the hallway walls but nothing in the rooms.
We managed to sneak a colorized print of Mom when she was an infant in the Roaring Twenties onto her nightstand as a birthday card. But that was a bit too inconspicuous.
No, what we wanted, we decidedd, was a copy of that photo of our garden variety guardian angels she had enjoyed every day at home. We'd put it right above her bed to watch over her.
Once we got the idea, we couldn't shake it. It had a power of its own. A thing that had to happen.
FINDING THE PHOTO
Of course we had to find the file first.
We slug our shoots, which are also dated, so something like "2001.05.30 Nephews Visit" might narrow our search. But our memory of the year was off. We thought it must have been 2009 or 20010. And we hadn't used so obvious a slug because there were images of other people and things that day.
We have various ways of correcting our recollection. One is a full text search of our journals. That revealed the correct year was 2007. It even pinpointed th date. So we quickly found the image.
It was a JPEG, which back then would not have been enhanced by Adobe Camera Raw. So we ran it through the latest software, correcting perspective and salvaging the highlights nicely.
All we had to do was print it. Easier said that done.
THE PRINT
The printer cartridges hadn't been squeezed in about a year (and longer before that). We'd probably empty them just conditioning the parked printer head, we thought. Inkjets are just horrible tech for infrequent printing.
Not to mention paper. What should we print it on? Glossy or a matte art paper? Our stock was over 10 years old by now.
But this was a thing that had to happen.
So we installed the most current Pro-100 drivers we found on the Canon site and loaded a 13x19 sheet of glossy Canon Photo Paper Pro to minimize the variables. Without an ICC profile for the ink/paper combination, we let the printer manage color.
We sent the data to the printer and then, lacking a blindfold and not a smoker, we left the room.
When we came back, there it was in all its glory: The Guardian Angels.
We can not tell you how happy we were.
We remembered not to touch it. The ink swells the surface of the paper into which it embeds itself. Things have to settle down. It was one of Kodak's innovations to create a pigment small enough to inhabit a porous glossy sheet so it could be handled immediately after printing but that technology was unique to Kodak. Every other inkjet, especially dye-baed printers, swell the surface of the sheet to embed the ink. Do not touch.
How long, we couldn't remember. But we transported the thing with a protective waxed sheet on it. So we didn't touch it for several hours.
We took it to the room and hung it with 3M mounting squares above Mom's bed. "What's that?" she laughed. "Your Guardian Angels," we said.
And now, every day we visit, there they are standing guard with their stakes and their smiles. And everyone who comes into that room, CNA, LVN, Wound Care RN, RNA, doctor, nurse practitioner, janitor, other visitors all smile at the two little protectors.
Of course we admit they are only our nephews and that was taken in 2007 before they went to prison.*
But what a perfect picture for the place.
CONCLUSION
So if you're got one of those on your phone, you'd better tag it so you can find it 20 years from now when it might do someone some good.
You'll be glad you did.