me & b&w

i haven't talked about this before, but i'm a photography enthusiast, specifically black & white old school. in my early days of community college i took several b&w photography classes, often repeating the same one just for the dark room time. yup, back when photos were taken with film & you had to develope it (which REALLY sucked), let it dry, then make a print of all your negatives & finally that's when the real good times started.

i loved working in the darkroom, it was where the magic happened. not just putting your film onto paper, but the tricks during the development process, that was the best part. i remember that's when i first learned i needed glasses as my instructor told me all of my photos were a little out of focus, well, they were in focus for my eyes!

i've always preferred b&w film because i feel as though it shows the truth, you don't get lost in all the color. i think i still have my photographer's eye, things still catch it; sometimes it's something obscure, other times it's something beautiful. i often switch my digital camera on to the b&w setting, but it will never replace that darkroom.

what inspired this post: this article on cnn.com.
a big thank you goes out to Katherine McIntosh, the child on the left; also to the library of congress for hosting the photograph; & of course to Dorothea Lange, my favorite photographer.

i guess part of the reason i love this photgraph so much is my mother & her mother were also "migrant mothers" so it really hits close to home. although i never went out to the fields, i went to the cantelope shed with my mother. my mom tells me stories of going to the tomato fields with her mother.