My Grandfather's gift to me

My Grandfather left us few physical reminders of his life here.

We recently received his history as written by himself, cut short by his death.

He drove a jeep in the war, amongst other things.
(That is a story for a whole other post)

It's from this side of the family I got the trigger happy shutter finger.
My Father and his Father were photographers.

After he passed my grandmother gave me a box of his cameras.

It was years ago, and I wasn't quite sure what to do with them.

One of them had been dropped in the ocean
(for non-cameras people...that is a slow and painful death for a camera)
that was kept as parts for it's replacement.
Luckily for me I had it...the "replacement" had a specially made eye piece so he wouldn't have to wear glasses and I had a few rolls of blurry pictures before figuring out it wasn't my focus, but replacing a tiny piece of glass that made everything right as rain.

There was this very cool looking medium format camera.
The one that has the accordian hood.
My Dad and I spent a week trying to close the dang thing once we opened it.

There was a roll of film in it that had long since gone bad.

So I got a roll, loaded it and took a few pictures LAST FALL and it has since sat on my fireplace biding it's time.

You see, I wasn't really sure anything would come of it.

This last week we got everything developed and they turned out!
It's a miracle.
In my head I was ready to be dissapointed,
but these are horribly beautiful.

Grainy,
underdeveloped,
scratched,
light leaks galore,
blurry.

And I love every one of them.

I've got another roll of film and I'm pretty sure it won't take half of the year to get it developed.