Happy New Year

Number-one daughter was down from Seattle with her boyfriend for a visit on the New Years holiday.

It was good to see her again. I was introduced into her life just before she turned 7. Her mother and I got married that year, and things changed for her. Things changed for me too. Instant family. Unemployed. Time to grow up, fast. There is a wall between us that grew to it’s thickest when she was about 18. It seems like it has slowly thinned over the last seven years. I hope that process will continue.

It finally stopped raining for a short while. I got a Nikon D50 camera for Christmas and spent some time walking and taking pictures with my wife and daughter on the road going up to the nearby rain swollen creek. I had been salivating over this camera ever since seeing some pictures taken with one.

I used to take pictures in 35mm, and had a darkroom in my basement in high school. I used an old Argus C-3 my Dad gave me. Most of the equipment I used I inherited from my long dead uncle Joel including developing tanks, a bulk film loader, the B&W enlarger, developing pans, safelight, etc. Uncle Joel was a studio musician that worked for CBS and lived with his family down in North Hollywood, CA. He died back in the 60’s of cancer. After my Aunt (his wife) developed brain cancer and was dying, their children came up to Oregon to live with us. My aunt miraculously recovered and moved up here also. My dad got the old dusty darkroom gear, and it sat in the basement until I took a geeky AV class in high school and learned how to develop and print pictures.