A Photographically Themed Christmas

We had a pretty photography-themed Christmas this year, at least for a few of us. I gave my dad a Nikon FG that I happened to get in a lucky find at a thrift store. I was pretty sure he would want it, but quality on these things can be hit and miss, so I bought it and did some testing, and fortunately it all seemed to be in good working order. I tossed in a variety of Ilford films I thought he might enjoy (he loves Ilford). My siblings and I also pitched in together to get him a light and a stand. One light does not a studio make, but it's a start. 

My parents gave me some rolls of black and white film (Ilford HP5 Plus 400—a stock I've liked so far), and some color filters for my Kodak Stereo Camera, which was pretty cool. There are dual yellow, orange, and red filters, and a single green one. I'm excited to give those a try. 

On top of that, my wife and I gave each other gifts that are somewhat cyclical. She'd been wanting a way to print digital photos from her phone easily, and I'd been wanting a way to scan negatives. So I gave her a bluetooth photo printer and a large album, and she gave me a Kodak negative/slide scanner. We got a kick out of the idea that she gave me a way to digitize photos and I gave her a way to make them physical again.

Finally, since this was the last Christmas for our oldest daughter before she became an adult, my wife and I collected as many photos of her as we could find and put them together in a nicely printed photo book. Now she has a collection of childhood photos that she can take with her wherever she goes from here (though not as many as we would wish, given a mold incident in some of our storage a number of years ago and the fact that we've lost a lot of photos to smart device failure over the years: hence my wife's desire for a printer). 

So, yeah. A lot of photography. A clear theme. I think we're all valuing the past and the present right now, and thinking about how to preserve them for the future.