So, many years back, maybe early 90's, I decided to cultivate my love of taking pictures and capturing moments in time by taking a photography class.  Remember, this was in a time where we used film...remember that?  There was no manipulation of color, only light.  You might be able to manipulate a little brighter contrast, or make them sepia or black and white and maybe even make the colors a little richer by the developing, not by the camera.  You shot what you saw in the viewfinder.  Man how I loved taking my camera everywhere we went, I was a shutterbug for real!  By taking the course, I had "units" in different types of photography, like action, portraiture, nature, sports, photojournalism, and by touching on each of these I realized which ones I was drawn to the most.  I didn't like taking group shots of people because to direct them was agonizing for me, photojournalism, I had an opportunity to be in the operating room during a breast augmentation....NOPE, not for me, I didn't do it....I took lots and lots of action shots when the boys played baseball, even tried selling the 4 X 6 prints for $3 each.  Moms would come to me and ask me to take pictures of their sons and when I would bring them to the field and tell them it was $3, they wouldn't take it, they wanted me to GIVE them the shots.  Well dang woman, it cost me time and the money to develop these for you, if I would've know you wouldn't pay a measly $3.00 for a beautiful memory of your son's childhood, I would've just taken shots of my own sons and been quite happy.  People are funny...

So then I started entering photo contests, I placed in some, one got published, I was feeling good, until they started putting my shots that I did with film in the same contest as the ones that people with digital images entered.  How not fair that was, you could tell the colors were manipulated and all kinds of editing was happening.  Put those up next to my film shots that were beautiful, true shots and I didn't have a chance.  So I quit entering...

I resisted giving up my film camera and all of the expensive equipment my hubby had bought me over the years until it got harder and harder to find somewhere to have the film developed and by then, if I was trying to make some money at it, people chose the photographers with the digital cameras. :(

Hubby finally bought me a digital and I taught myself just the basics on how to use it, I have never purchased editing software, I use the free ones I can download onto my laptop and I don't pursue it as a side hustle anymore, it has lost it's shine for me.  Now, I take shots with my phone mostly, because we don't even develop them and put them in frames anymore.  But lately I have been thinking of doing a more artistic thing with it, just developing an idea now, but it might urge me to pick my camera up again and go for those Sunday drives where we just stopped on the side of the road and took pictures of old barns, cotton fields, old trucks rusting in someone's pasture...hubby always knew what I liked and would direct my shot sometimes, it was a fun thing we did together and I miss those times.

This is just one small thing in my life that I have seen change over the years, like no more house phones, getting a microwave for the first time and now they are on the way out, using a typewriter...kids don't even know what that is.  There are just so many things in my own lifetime that I would've never thought would go away...like phone books!  So can you imagine the things an 80, 90, 100 year old person has seen in their lifetime?  Blows my mind!  I would LOVE to sit down with someone of that age and talk about life in their earlier years and what they have seen change.  Technology must be terrifyingly foreign to them.  I see it in my work, people STILL don't use email and we have to mail documents to them, amazing!

I remember in the 70's, we all thought that by the year 2000 we would be in flying cars and wearing shiny silver suits.  Lights would turn on in our home just by telling them to and food would come out of some machine like in the Jetsons!  

I still can't figure out how our voice travels over the phone...life is an amazing journey of change and wonder. I can't imagine what it will be like when my granddaughters are my age.

Musings of a modern day Mamaw.