Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Kodachrome

Way back when I was in college my major was photography. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of taking pictures, developing film and then spending time in the darkroom creating prints. Once in a while I used a big view camera which was an additional experience, definitely not the point and shoot stuff I do now. Taking the time to set up a big camera, preparing everything and actually taking a photograph was a big effort. We used to use large format Polaroid film for test shots, to be sure that everything was correct before committing to a big negative, because with film you couldn’t tell if everything was right until development and printing, by which time the whole camera/setup would have been taken down.

Recently two of the tools that I worked with have gone away. Kodak has stopped making Kodachrome film, and Polaroid stopped making all instant film. A company in Europe purchased the rights to Polaroid film and produce it in small quantities, but it’s not the same.

I attended school in Rochester, New York, the home of Kodak and DuPont and cold dark winters. This song came out afterI was there, and seemed to fit the school but never was really adopted as the school anthem as I felt it should have been. Paul didn't do a music video of it, but this one seems to select images that fit the song.


I remember driving with our daughter a while back and a Simon and Garfunkel song came on the radio, and she asked why we were listening to old fogy music. Ah well, I still like it now (and she listens to it also, guess she became an old fogy too). After Garfunkel Paul still recorded some good music, his Graceland album is very listenable. Whenever this one comes on the radio images of this video flash through my head.


I like Chevy, and the size difference between the two of them is rather amusing. His year on Saturday Night Live was very amusing, he did a marvelous Gerald Ford impression.

Ladysmith Black Mombassa members sure look like they are having fun dancing to this one.

9 comments:

Las Vegas Mama said...

i love these 3 songs! classic!!

The Blonde Duck said...

The new cupcakes are terrible!

Don said...

Nice videos! I especially like the Kodachrome one; someone pretty talented put that together.

Burned up a lot of that film myself back in the olden days(!) but never fooled with large formats.

The Blonde Duck said...

The only photography they had in my college was photojournalism.

Marjie said...

The Kodachrome video was great. My kids know better than to laugh when I bemoan the loss of Polaroids, and the change in general from SLRs to digital - and they applaud me for still using my Leica sometimes.

A Daft Scots Lass said...

Great "old fogie" vids...I guess I'm in the category too now.

Merci said...

What fun to watch these clips! It seems like just yesterday that I was agonizing over which 35mm camera to buy. I still like the quality of those prints better, though it's hard to beat the instant gratification of a digicam.

Colleen Barnett said...

Paul Simon is a fantastic musician, and I particularly loved the video clip with Chevy Chase. He's a rare one, that one! xx

Rob said...

Funny to think when I was in India in 2001-2 I was using a 35mm SLR (Pentax MX) and two 35mm compacts (an automatic and a sturdy old Ricoh manual rangefinder one which I had with me as backup in case everything else died. Not that MXs die easily: the battery only powers the metering and everything else is manual (the shutter is clockwork) so even if the electrics got fried you could still take the same pictures though you'd have to bracket the exposures. (Happened to my wife once when we got caught in a Living Desert-type flash flood in Yemen, though as I had my identical camera with me we just switched to the other body.) For my birthday a few weeks ago I was given money to get a digital camera which will be good for blogging (though not so good if the electrics get zapped....)