Camera becomes constant companion
Camera becomes constant companion
My life was changed by a Burger King camera.
It was a black, plastic 110mm about the size of a pack of Tic Tacs. It had a tiny red button for the shutter and a square, plastic viewfinder that flipped up.
This was my first camera. It was cheap as heck.
It was the kind of toy you get in a kid's meal or costs $1.99 when you buy a Whopper or something. But that rinky-dink camera opened up a whole new world for me. The day I brought it home, it ignited something in me. I was 6, maybe 7, and I wanted to photograph everything in sight.
I shot rolls of film on the things that mattered most in a first graders' life: her stuffed animals, her girlfriends, her school teachers, and, of course, her cats. In my backyard, I photographed my stuffed animals. I'd perch them on our wooden fence, place them on tree branches and on our swing. I even took my two-foot-tall stuffed crocodile to school one day where I photographed him hanging out on the playground while my friends jumped rope in the background.
My girlfriends were always willing participants, happy to flash a toothless smile. My teachers were less enthusiastic. None of them refused to have their photo taken, but they would stand there reluctantly, arms folded with a half smile, eye squinted, skeptically looking down at this first-grader with a Burger King camera.
Still, they humored me.
I loved taking pictures, but I really loved seeing the results. In the car ride home from the drug store, I'd flip through my new stack of photos still smelling of fresh photo chemicals. I loved the satisfaction of seeing my work and holding it in my hands.
Not every photo was a masterpiece. With disgust, I'd toss aside the blurry ones or the three photos I wasted on that airplane in the sky that looked more like a spec of dust once developed. But in every pack, there were always a few really great ones. Those were the photos that kept me picking up that camera. And the bad ones, they helped me learn from my mistakes.
It wasn't until I took a photography class in college that it cemented my love for the medium. Through that class, I got to know my city better. I became an explorer, wandering down city streets I had never walked before and going up to strangers asking them to be photographed. I started to see the world differently, the beauty in simple things, such as the way the evening sunlight hits the side of a building. Once I took the class, that was it for me: Photography stole my heart.
From that point on, that camera became my constant companion. It clung to the side of my hip as my best friend and I road tripped across the country. It captured the final photo I would take of my grandmother before she passed away. It became my emotional escape on back roads for the times when I sought solitude and solace.
For Christmas this past year, my husband surprised me with a digital SLR camera. I was instantly overwhelmed and intimidated by all of its buttons and gadgets. This was a REAL camera, the kind of camera that professionals use, not amateurs like me. Still, I always wanted one, and now I had one and I had no clue what to do with it.
Two months later, I still haven't figured out all the camera's functions, still haven't pored through the tome of an instruction manual it came with, but none of that really matters.
What matters is the passion it has reignited in me. That same excitement I felt the day I brought home that Burger King camera has returned. And although you won't find me photographing my stuffed animals in our backyard, I think it's safe to say that my husband and my friends are tired of me sticking a camera in their face.
Still, they humor me.
Contact Carla Kucinski Seward at 373-7319 or carla@gotriad.com.
Some of Carla Kucinski Seward's first photography subjects were her stuffed animals.
Carla Kucinski Seward
