A number of years ago, my wife and I were in the habit of going to flea markets and thrift stores pretty frequently. When prices started going crazy and the pickings got slim, our visits tapered off. A couple of times a year we'd pack coffee and snacks, and head over to Atlanta to spend hours looking around Scott's Antique Market. There were usually cool discoveries to be made on every outing, and we'd normally come home with a carload of vintage furniture and a camera or two. With money still in our wallets, to boot. During those trips is when I started buying old cameras in earnest, anything that looked interesting. One Christmas, my wife gifted me several rolls of film, and that's when I decided to make a practice of not just collecting, but shooting each and every old camera I picked up.
Inevitably, you'll forget about a roll of partially exposed film sitting in one of your cameras, only to discover it years or even decades later. When this happens, it is an invitation to do a little personal archeology to figure out what the hell you were thinking or doing at the time you made a given exposure.
At one point, my wife rented space in an old country schoolhouse for her studio. While she was working, I used to enjoy walking around the place looking for interesting compositions. I'd forgotten about this until I found some old negatives lying around. Old plaster and lathe walls are always worth investigating. At this point in photographic history, you'll never get rich or famous taking photographs of old walls, but it is a good way to develop your sense of composition. Plus, I'll be honest, I just like walking around taking pictures of things, "to see what they look like when photographed", as Winogrand famously said.
The color palate of the film emulsion adds another dimension to images of this kind that I particularly like, too.
I took the image below using a thrifted box Brownie on gifted 127 film, and then the camera and film got mislaid for a decade or so. As you can see, the film didn't hold up all that well. On the face of it, this is just a picture of the house across the street from where I used to live. But the memories it conjures up are definitely fun. An elderly widow used to live in this particular house, and she had the incredibly annoying habit of walking into my yard, and peering into a window to snoop on me. My god I hated that! Then, one time, I was walking from the shower to the kitchen in my birthday suit to get a cup of coffee. And wouldn't you know it, as I grabbed my mug, I glimpsed the old woman's face pressed up against a side window. That morning she really got an eyeful, and when she realized what she was looking at, she got out of there fast. Turns out that old women can move pretty quickly when they need to.
That was the last time I ever saw her. Fortunately, soon thereafter I moved to a new house, but she has since shuffled off this mortal coil.
