A couple of months ago, I put my first roll through an Olympus XA that my dad had given me earlier this year. I wasn't too crazy over the results and was uninspired to pick it up again, but I woke up yesterday just itching to shoot AND develop. I found one last roll of expired Tri-X pan 400 in the fridge and thought "oh, what the heck." I popped it into the Olympus and decided to burn through the 24 exposures to see if I could come away with anything that would encourage me to pursue shooting more with this little clamshell camera.
I remembered that I was out of fixer and also knew that I hadn't been completely pleased with how my Ilfotech HC developer was performing with the Tri-X films I had developed thus far, so I ran out to the camera store and picked up some Kodak D-76 developer and fixer powders. I refused to spend $20 on two empty gallon containers they sold there, so I went home and dumpster dove in our own bin, only to discover that my husband apparently has a secret passion for crushing milk cartons with Hulk-like intensity. I was therefore forced to finally utilize my heavy glass moonshine jug for something other than collecting dust and memories of the South and I dumped out hummingbird nectar to free up another bottle for my fixer (guess we'll be skipped on this year's migration...).
Now that all the materials were acquired, I just had to shoot. The girls had dressed themselves that day and they had actually done pretty well, so there was no need to change them. I made it my mission to capture some frames that show who they are individually and as sisters. I can't believe how much they've grown in these short 3-4 years; they're both officially out of the babyish looking stage and are really starting to resemble actual kids/mini-adults (there's a chance this happened earlier and my mommy goggles just refused to let me see it though). I love these three shots because they embody their personalities so well: my sweet rose with her kind eyes and warmth, and my little bird with her quirks and intensity. I'm sure these don't look like much to a stranger, but to me, these are images I'll cherish forever because they represent my children in the way that I'll always remember them at this stage in their life.
