I’ve had quite a few “forgotten frames” experiences in recent years. As a result of these experiences, I do not even hesitate to take film in for processing if I find a roll in a drawer, in a packed up box, etc., even if that roll could very well be blank.
That’s what happened with the photos I am sharing today. I found film in a drawer in my parents’ bathroom, which is the room where I used to process black and white film. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed the roll prior to this, but I decided to take it to the photo lab the next time I stopped in. It was a roll of Ilford HP5+. I knew I hadn’t shot that type of film in years, and I estimated that 2007 would have been the last time I’d had any of it at my parents’ house. That’s all I had to go on when I took the roll for processing. I told the photo lab that the roll could be blank but asked them to go ahead and process it anyway.
When I picked the film up and saw that it wasn’t a blank roll, I was a very happy girl! I squinted at the negatives before getting home to look at the disc of scanned photos and found that I was right about the film’s approximate age. Judging from my niece’s age in the photos and a couple of other context clues, I figured the film must have been taken in December 2006 or January 2007. I cannot, however, discern which camera I used for this roll of film!
From a day at the park with my niece. I LOVE these! You can’t see her face clearly in any of them, so they just feel like little vignettes or impressions of a child playing at a park. She was only 5 when these were taken!
The only thing I can gather is that this roll of film was not taken with an SLR. Very possible that I used the Olympus XA3 I had at the time. Some of them just LOOK “zone focused” (a method where you have to guess the distance between the camera and whatever it is you’re photographing.)
Mikey and Meredith at IHOP, probably after we’d seen some bands play
Food Not Bombs. Typically how I spent my Saturdays at that time.
A BBQ restaurant in my town
Here’s what I mean when I say that the photos were probably not taken with an SLR. Though I don’t even see how I would think this photo would be in focus when I took it (and this photo is one way I placed the time period when this film was exposed, since I had color versions from the same day.)
By comparison, this is a color version of the same photo, taken with a Yashica TL Electro-X (an SLR.)
I tried to do some sleuthing by looking closely at the photos that were taken of windows (like the BBQ restaurant or the elephant one) in case my reflection were visible and I could catch a glimpse of the camera being used. No such luck though! It will remain a mystery.
Film: Ilford HP5+, film expired by the time it was developed in November 2013. Camera: Unknown.
