I was cleaning out my mom’s house, we’re selling it, and I came across a tea kettle I got from China. In 1988 I spent the summer in China, it may be hard to believe but it was the era of glasnost and China was similarly opening up, even talking about past tragedies like the Cultural Revolution. This wouldn’t last. In 1989, well, a bad thing happened and we got the China we have today. I was a freshman in high school and I really didn’t understand what I had witnessed until the next year when I was glued to CNN. In China, I had a Nikon Coolpix point and shoot and I took so many pictures, maybe 15 to 20 rolls of pictures from the Forbidden Palace and Tiananmen square (yeah about that) to the Great Wall to the Terra Cotta soldiers to the Yurts of Inner Mongolia to the hustle and bustle of the emerging super city of Shanghai. I went everywhere. We left for Hong Kong back to the states and I dutifully stuffed my film in my checked bag, so the film would not be subjected to the X Ray machine. I would never see that bag or my film ever again. I’m mostly venting, but I bet there were some amazing photos on that film, those pictures documented a China flirting with openness, that seems so far off now. Anyone else lose photos that meant a lot to them?

  • wrldfire@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    I found an old box brownie in a charity shop when I was in college, at the height of my interest in medium format. I was so excited that I’d found another camera I could have some fun with.

    I’d gone out a couple times with it and it worked perfectly, mostly test shots and fairly simple street photography.

    Then I managed to take a trip to Berlin, I loved the idea of photographing the Brandenburg gate and a few other historic landmarks in black and white on my glorified pin-hole camera.

    I filled the roll, wound it up, left it in the camera and got back home.

    I then completely forgot about developing the roll until about 3 years later when I was in university. I hadn’t developed a roll of film myself for around the same amount of time at this point so I completely forgot to turn off the red light in the darkroom, processed the film and it was pure black.

    Tldr : I’m stupid, forgot to turn light off when processing film