To all the cameras I've loved before || My life in Lists

A good friend of mine from high school recently asked me what kind of camera I'm using these days. He confessed that he had camera envy when I received my very first 35mm our senior year. I still have this camera, although it's broken. For fun, I took this picture of my Minolta X700 (see #3 below) and sent it to him.

It got me reminiscing about all the cameras I've had in my life. I hadn't really thought about their significance but I've had a love affair with each of them.  As I wrote this post, I remembered many others, but these are the main models that I remember distinctly.

1960's

1.  Mom's cameras - The Kodak Instamatic and the Kodak Prinz 110 Auto Pocket Camera (technically 1978). I remember these fondly, the odd shaped film canisters...the ice cube shaped flash.  These took many of my childhood photos incidentally, whose muted colors and soft focus are being replicated now in many different photo editing programs and apps.

1970's

2.  The Polaroid Electric Zip land the Polaroid Land Camera.  I loved the instant gratification these cameras gave.  I hated that I'd use up all of the film and not be able to get more right away because of the expense.  I was, after all, very (very, very) young then.

1980s

3.  My Minolta X700 35mm.  My dad got this for me my senior year in high school.  This is the camera that catapulted my love for photography. It was Minolta's top model in their final manual-focus SLR series before the introduction of the auto-focus Minolta Maxxum 700.   This was the camera that went with me on my senior trip to Colorado, to the Olympics in LA (Mary Lou Retton's year), and in many hours of photography classes.  This is the camera that my friend, Dan, envied.

1990's

4.  My first venture into digital cameras.  While my Canon Powershot sd500 was not the original or the only digital snappy I owned, it is the one I learned the most from in digital photography.  Most of my marriage and birth of my children were documented on digital.  In the beginning, I didn't want to stray from using film.  I fought it, but I eventually gave in and have loved it ever since.  The only downside being that I have files upon files of photos (many of which should be deleted) that I've not managed properly.  I guess it goes along with the boxes and boxes of photos and film I have stored away.  This Canon Powershot is also the one I used, initially, to take product shots for my website, blog, and business. 

2000

5.  My current camera is a Nikon D60.  It's a great camera that I'm slowly learning to use.  Nowadays, these cameras can do just about everything.  With the technology, however, comes a very steep learning curve.  One I'll be climbing for a long time.  I want to purchase many different lenses, and filters, and gadgets for this bad boy.  I'd love to to get to the point where I could actually tell you what I did to get a particular shot.  Right now, I'm running on luck.

Do you have a camera or cameras that you remember fondly? 

My life in lists: Guest blogger Allisa Jacobs shares her life in colors

My life Color List

Hello, this is Allisa Jacobs & I’m thrilled to be here, guest posting! Linda writes a fantastic series, My Life in Lists, and I knew I wanted to create one too...featuring my life in colors.  From bold & moody to bright & sunny I’ve gone through a spectrum of color preferences. I can say for sure though, that I’ve never ever been a fan of pastels.

Here’s a little peek at my life in colors:

1970’s

Born the last year of the 70’s, I love looking back & seeing my lovely flower-child of a mom dressing me in all things bright & fun; grass green, tangerine, marigold & apricot.

1980’s

 
Growing up, my rural town was a little late in getting fashion memos, especially for the eighties trend of neons. But boy, when we did, I was all about the neon lime green, black & white! A splash of hot pink? Sure!

1990’s

After coming out of my teenage moodiness of hunter green & maroon, I finally embraced our high school colors of orange & yellow (still believe we loved orange before it was cool!) and other cheerful palettes of blues & pinks. The Mary Kay lady told me blue & rose pink were my colors. I held onto this as an nonnegotiable fact for a very long time. You can see this in photos from my junior year prom- cobalt blue formal dress & matching blue eye shadow with matte pink lips. (Where was my mother!?)

2000’s

Moved to California & was ready to conquer the world. Full of confidence & excitement, I proudly sported bold colors; grass green, bright coral, indigo, turquoise blue, & sunshine yellow.  As a new high school teacher, my students often made fun of my fashion choices – one of my students dubbed my favorite green trousers- “John Deere pants”. But, I loved going through the world with so much color.

Now

I’ve mellowed a bit in some ways. I can’t pull off those green pants if I tried. But I’m also seeing colors in a whole new way…through the eyes of my curious toddler. He loves anything orange. Which means, by extension, I do too (again). I’ll wear an apricot colored top to make him smile & my new sneakers have a slash of tangerine down the side. I feel like I’m settling in to my color preferences...a bit less about fashion (or Mary Kay ladies) and more about what feels good to me, like….maize, mango, persimmon, ocean blue, and chocolate brown. I think color choices really do reflect our feelings & stage in our life...I can’t wait to see what palette I’ll gravitate towards next!


[Thank you, Allisa, for introducing a great way to review our lives!  I, too, did a stint with the 80's neon but then gravitated to black in the 90's.  While my decor palette tends to be on the neutral side, I love bright colors that  I see in other's interiors.  I may have to rethink my whole color scheme now!

Allisa incorporates beatuiful colors into her handbags.  Be sure to visit her shop here and her blog here.   If you are on Twitter, you can follow her: @allisaJacobs here.


Allisa and I are guest blogging for each other.  I'll be writing a post on her blog in the coming week or so about what I did in my "other life;" My professional life before owning a small indie business.]