It was a sticky 90 degrees outside and the perfect summer evening to execute my idea… I remember that week I wanted to submit something different to my freshman high school photography class. The family dog, flowers, and shoes were always the subject of everyone’s photos and it was getting slightly repetitive looking at Fido week after week. I wanted to share a story through multiple photos and needed to somehow capture time in a simple way.
After dinner I grabbed my Haagen-Dazs ice cream and headed out the door camera in hand and of course my curious little sister in tow wondering what the HECK I was up to. I laid my chocolate ice cream cone on the patio table and waited for the sun to work its magic. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes passed and I clicked away on my camera. Clearly I was passionate about photography – I mean I sacrificed my ice cream, let alone my CHOCOALTE ice cream. My sister looked on with that girl-you-are-nuts look on her face.
I was shooting film, so I crossed my fingers that I captured what I was looking for and couldn’t wait to get into the darkroom the next day to see. I think I actually went into school early just to get a head start on the developing process. I moved the sheets back and forth in the solution under the small red lights in the dark room. The black and white shapes slowly appeared and I marched out of the darkness into the classroom to pin the photos on the close line to dry. Mission accomplished. There hung what I consider the first real story I ever told through photos, however interesting. Needless to day, my melting frozen dessert stood out that week among the bugs, cars, and well, Fido.
I recently came across those photos I took years and year ago:
