Chrome powered time machine

Sometimes you find a lost roll and it reminds you of a time you had forgotten.

After finding a roll of long ago shot slide film, I finally got it developed. I think it’s from around 2011 or 2012, since the 4Runner is still wearing the street tires it came with when I bought it in the one frame it appears in. I’m not even sure what emulsion this roll is. All I had at the time was Astia 100F and Velvia. I think it’s probably Velvia 100.

After all, The Slideprinter here in town offers something that most other cities do not have: same day slide processing. Of course, I’m always at work when they are open, so I’ve never been able to get by there. I’d bought some rolls of Retrochrome from the Film Photography Podcast store and shot the first one to see how that worked out. I’ll do a review on that at a later time. But while I was at it, I went ahead and dropped off that old roll.

Finding old shots is like opening the door on a time machine. There were shots of Central City in fall, the old tractors that show up at Chatfield for the pumpkin festival and corn maze, and some of a drive we took up Old Fall River Road.

I haven’t thought about that drive in a long time. It had snowed hard up high that winter, and they couldn’t get the road open until a couple of months late. Shortly after we drove it, it was closed again for maintenance and that was it for the year. Weather can change pretty rapidly, and you don’t want to get caught out in it up there. I didn’t need to lock hubs driving it, but lower clearance vehicles would have been out of luck.

I don’t remember taking a lot of photos of that drive. Paying attention to the road, I think. But the ones I found were enough to bring the memories back. The magic of photography is the ability to take a fraction of a second and make it last longer than life. It’s a visit back via a time machine.

I doubt I’ll find any more rolls like that in the future. I’ll take them by the Slideprinter or drop them in the mail. It’ll turn things around and get them back to me faster, but still, I’m tempted. I might just have to hide a roll from myself now and then, just so I can find it later on and relive something that happened again. Slide film is actually a bad choice for that, but it worked. Whatever I chose to use, it’ll be like leaving a time capsule for myself, a day that can be repeated, and last a lifetime.

Chrome powered time machine