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Photographs you took over 30 years ago

This is an awesome thread! Had no idea it was here in the People forum.
It looks like it quickly became non-people or all-inclusive.

Brings back lots of bad memories! Lead film bags, tons of rejects, 24 and 36 exposures per roll (15 for medium format), and super expensive film/processing!
Despite what seems like expensive gear nowadays, the cost per image is a tiny fraction of what it used to be.
 
Great observation Mr Roboto. My fear for future generations is that, while people today take far more photographs than we ever did, the media used to take them is far less likely to survive. I have the negatives of the photos I took in the '70's, '80's as well as electronic scans of them but it is the negatives that are more likely to survive.
 
By comparison to today's immediate-gratification standards, the learning curve back then was extremely flat. The feedback we'd get (in the form of processed film) usually took 4~7 days for Kodachrome developing. By then, the subject/scene was long gone and the camera settings forgotten unless we noted them on a pad which I never did. Unless one had a Polaroid back for medium format equipment.

And the cost! OMG! I seem to remember K64 being in the $2.80~$3.50 per roll range for 24 exposures in the '80s. Developing was an additional $3~$5 (something like that). Working part time at $3.35/hr while going to high school further slowed my recreational education!
 
Two photos taken in 1982 of the recovery of parts of Pilot Officer J.M Henderson's Hawker Hurricane V6601 of 247 Squadron RAF from the River Colne,Brightlingsea, Essex. One of three shot down in quick succession by a Me109 while flying in line astern formation. Henderson baled out over Clacton, Essex unhurt, his Hurricane plunging into the river about 1.5 miles away. One image shows the crash site in the mud of the river, the other show my old friend Peter Smith by what is left of part of the main spar of the aircraft.
brightlingsea (2).jpg

brightlingsea (3).jpg
 
That is very graphic, did you do some kind of Posterisation process on the image?
Yes. Tones were separated on 4x5" high contrast Kodalith film and then exposed on photographic paper in sequence with different filtration. I used a home-made light-tight easel for that so I could turn on the darkroom lights to set up the next exposure. Those were fun days. :LOL:
 
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