When high tech becomes low junk

E_WASTEA couple of Saturdays ago, the district Scouts assembled in a local box store parking lot. They had a large dumpster – open at one end – into which they were piling used electronic equipment that folks around town wanted to discard. By the time a photographer friend and I arrived there about midday for a peek at what was going on, the dumpster was nearly full. He and I began nosing through the discarded electronics to see what the Scouts had collected.

“Old, well-used, communications artefacts,” I said and then asked my buddy, “I wonder whether you and I qualify?” (more…)

The royal image

Queen Elizabeth II in open car during 1959 Royal Tour (notice kids with cameras).

Buried away in a dusty, old photo album somewhere, a photograph I took with my Kodak Brownie “Holiday Flash” camera sits mounted in those black, triangular photo corners. There might actually be two or three photos in that series. But the best of them – if you look very closely at the snapshot – shows a long limousine carrying an apparently important person who is waving in the middle of the picture. The only sound I remember – above the nearly deafening cheering around me as I framed the shot – was my mother entreating me.

“Take it now, Ted,” she said. “There she is!” (more…)