Patrick's Place

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Saturday Six

1. How old were you the first time you ever snapped a photo, even if using someone else’s camera?

I think I snagged someone's small camera after the Christmas of Cameras (all the kids got instamatics), but I mostly knew better than to touch "real" cameras (Dad's, Jan's, etc.). I had a mini-instamatic for our trip to England when I was 14. So stylin'!

2. Have you ever owned a film camera or developed your own photos?

Well, yeah, see above re instamatics. I still have a 35 mm AF sitting in plain sight on the bookshelf in the upstairs hall, but I haven't used it, or our digital camera, in years. Camera phone FTW. Jan used to have a darkroom and developed all his own (black-and-white) film; he's a dinosaur who categorically refuses to use digital media, still.

3. Who was the first person you remember taking a photo of?

I'm sure it was a family member, probably Dad.

4. Describe a photo from your childhood that means a great deal to you and why it does.

Here's the thing: Dad took dozens of photos a month, developed them onto slides, and all of those slides are at my brother's house where he said he'd organize them. I doubt he's done jack-shit, though, and there are at least two pictures I want. One is of me and my mom's brother Del, and another is of my brother sitting on the edge of a drop-off overlooking Dallas Divide* calmly taking a picture, holding his sunglasses in his teeth. When Dad took that picture, Mom was having "ten cat fits" about my brother being about a foot from the edge of a thousand-foot fall.

5. How many photo albums (or scrapbooks) do you have of old family photos?

My family was a big scrapbook-keeping family, but I have several from when I was addicted to Creative Memories in the 90s and early 00s; since then I've been very bad about keeping things in order....

6. How many photos (in total) do you have hanging on your walls in your home?

We FINALLY hung the photos that had been sitting on the front stairs for about 8 months. There are probably about 20 in the whole house, and 95% are on the wall of the stairway.

The view bro was going for, minus the trees in front.