Snapshots

Once upon a time, I worked for Wal-Mart, that superstore conglomerate that makes billions of dollars a year and refuses to provide adequate benefits to it's employees that put up with every degree of stupidity the world has to offer (can you tell I didn't carry many happy memories away from the five years of my life I gave to them?) In spite of leaving with an anxiety disorder and a much lowered opinion of the general public, my time spent there was not all threats and snotty remarks.
The first four years I spent there, I worked in the one hour photo center.As I developed the photo's of others I developed my own love for photography. Like everyone I worked with I became enamoured by the photography process and decided I could do better than the average Joe Camera with a little practice . I bought a Nikon N75 SLR (it uses film and not a memory card) and went about testing my creative ability by taking pictures of anything and everything. I spent many afternoons just driving around snapping pictures that I then took to work and developed and edited in the lab. I loved having free reign during our down time to work on my own photo's. This was the time before the current reich and employees at Wal-Mart had considerably more freedom ( we didn't have a strict dress code, we didn't get fired for being late, and we sure as shit didn't have . My photo's were often used for in store promotions, particularly when I volunteered with the Madison County animal shelter and took photo's of the dogs/cats available for adoption and used those photo's on the labs greeting cards. This helped out the sales of the cards and also helped many dogs/cats find forever homes (before the store got a new manager who didn't like the "clutter" of the promotion and discontinued it, heartless bastard.)
I have had one published photo. I have never sold a print (I've never tried).
I take photo's because I like capturing something brillaint on film. Time machines may not yet exist, but we do have our ways of preserving a point in time, of capturing a moment of time to share for years to come.
I haven't been taking many photo's lately but I hope to change that this summer. Film is hella expensive to develop (you buy the film and process the film unlike it's digital counterpart.) I did have a digital camera for general snapshots but it doesn't touch the picture quality of my SLR even before I dropped and broke it as a drunken casualty of my last Halloween party. If I had about $700 laying around I'm sure I could get a comparable digital SLR (something perhaps to consider in the future but for now is out of the question.) but for now the Nikon will have to do.
Perhaps in a future blog I will post more than 1 or 2 of my photo's to get some feedback. Unfortunately they are all still stored on my old computer and I've been too lackluster and lazy to transfer them to my nifty new laptop. I also have several rolls of negatives I need to have transferred to CD of various trips to New Orleans, pets, portraits I've done for friends and loved ones and even my sisters wedding.
I'm off to dust off my lens and get ta' snapping. Ciao!

The published photo titled "Butterflies Do Dream"


I call this "A Vampires Nightmare"

"Give Mother Earth a Hand"

"Doing the Cha Cha On My Heart"