Relics From The Past

For Thanksgiving, I went to visit some relatives that I have in Kentucky. The food was good and the company was great, in fact barring one incident, the whole trip was very rewarding. That one incident, unfortunately, was that I developed a severe case of bronchitis in the days leading up to thanksgiving and so most of my ‘holiday’ was spent prone, coughing, and generally feeling like shit. That being said, this was the first time in recent history inasmuch as I can tell that I actually had thanksgiving with relatives other than my immediate family and, all things considered, I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.

Anyway, one of the most interesting parts of my trip was that my cousin Jessica (who had inherited most of my father’s old film gear) gave me all of her equipment because she had since gone wholly digital. While all the equipment was really ace and in good condition, the real gem that I found was a roll of undeveloped colour film nestled at the bottom of the bag.

When I got back and re-entered the swing of things, the mysterious film was set aside but it always tugged at the back of my conscience. The tugging then intensified almost unbearably when I learned the process for developing colour film, but I just couldn’t seem to find them time. But then one day I did.

As I loaded the film, a myriad of scenarios ran like wildfire through my mind. I had long since decided that the roll was Jessica, accidentally discarded, but what the film contained (and whether this film would even develop anything) eluded and teased me mercilessly. I was pretty sure that the pictures were simply landscapes shot on one of the many hiking trips my physically active cousin and her significant other went on, either that or a bunch of pictures of animals — she is a veterinarian — that she either saw or treated. However, there was a little voice in side me that secretly hoped that the images were of a forgotten honeymoon photo shoot or of similar ill-advised nature. The truth was actually much better than any of this.

When I took the film out of the developer, it almost was extremely dark, deep magenta, so dark in fact, that I almost threw it out but some unknown force stayed my hand and I instead went and scanned it. The pictures were horribly degraded and my low-quality scan did not help much and so I went back and scanned them at 800 dpi and they finally became clear.

The negatives were not shot by my cousin, nor were they anywhere as mundane as I thought. These images were instead taken 14 years ago when my father was in Zimbabwe visiting his brother. It amazes me that this film, stored the the hot landscapes out Houston, TX and then central Kentucky even came out, but as soon as I saw the first elephant tusk, that just made the film so much more priceless.