Bovinae


Some cattle, photographed by my mother when she was very young, with a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye. I prevented my mother from selling the camera in a lawn sale, and it's been in my possession every since. The trouble is that it was damaged some years ago.

After scanning close to 1000 of my mother's old photos, I am forced to consider the possibility that she is partly responsible for my love of photography. I am also forced to recognize that advancing technology killed any photographic skill she may have had. Most of her early photos were taken with a medium format camera, as you can see from the photo above. I love big square negatives much more than the 35 mm variety.

She dumped her clumsy camera for one of those compact cameras that used 110 cartridge film. The first kind used disposable flash cubes, and later ones had a built-in flash. This led, of course, to colour balance problems, grain, and generally bad photos and, eventually, red-eye. When I was eight or nine years old, I was gifted with a Kodak Instamatic 126, which was not much better.

Anyway, I like the cows.