Ode To Twelve Years

Now I know why people pay large amounts of money for photographers.

When Tarzan and I were married - twelve years ago today - digital photography was not really a thing yet. It was, but for things like a wedding most stuff was still being shot in analog. And along with that comes the print discussions and issues.

We got certain images bound in a book. But there was no CD for us to take home and get our own prints from later.

Many years, more money and a few slight issues later we had the original negatives in our possession. However, they were not standard 35mm negatives, no, we had 120mm negatives which can't be scanned on a regular scanner, or on most commercial ones without paying A LOT more money. Again.

I dithered about it for a while and Tarzan finally got tired of me and bought a flatbed scanner with an attachment for 120mm (which was less expensive than getting someone else to do the scanning) so we could scan our negatives and finally, FINALLY have digital copies of our wedding photos.

I finished the scanning a few weeks ago and got our first look in 12 years at our images.

And realized what "retouching" actually means:

Some of the flaws were less noticeable and then we realized how young we were back then:

And then we looked at our families and how young THEY were:

The breakdown of the above photo is as follows, starting on the far left; the adorable flower girl now co-manages a business; the next girl is married, has 2-1/2 kids and has lived in three countries; the next girl has a master's degree and dates like a fiend; the next one got married this last summer and works with animals, curing cancer or something; the girl closest to me has been married, divorced, works as an interior designer and had lived in 12 apartments in her city; Tarzan's brother (going down the other side) has been married, widowed, married again, with two kids; the next brother works for the state, making sure we're free of ingested toxins, is married and has three kids; the next brother is a NASA scientist with a wife and baby; the next brother returns from his mission in three months; and the last one on the right just started college.

Yeah.

A lot of stuff has gone down since we got married - and that's just family - but we have learned so much and done so much and even though we're smack in the middle of a wild ride, I wouldn't want to be in the cart with anyone else:

This is me - HAPPY ANNIVERSARY Tarzan!