Renewable Resource

Today I was having lunch with my wife downtown while the kids were at school, and I saw this 20ish guy with a Canon T70 camera. I asked him about the camera and we struck up a quick conversation on photography. Turns out
he’s taking black and white photography class at the local Junior College and using his parents old 35mm film camera. I blogged about the photography I did back in college using my T70 and even posted a picture of my camera on Zooomr.

He probably wasn’t born when I got my camera, and said he thought his parents got his camera before he was born. My old T70 is broken and had been stored in the attic until a couple of weeks ago when I decided to use my 50mm lens for Poor Man’s Macro shots. I had also had the 75-200mm lens pictured here. Since I wasn’t using it anymore I offered it to the him for free. He was extremely grateful and shocked. This evening I dropped the lens off to him at work (he works in grocery store that I had to go to anyway). He still couldn’t quite believe his good fortune.

I was happy to give him the lens. It was doing me no good and he will put it to good use. He seems to really enjoy photography, and is wondering if he can make a career of it. Maybe someday he’ll be a famous photographer and I can say I helped him get started. I was also touched by his response. He was genuinely thankful and excited. A lot of kids I’ve seen around have a sense off entitlement, like the world owes them something. Not this young man. He’s working hard, going to college, and loves photography.

So here’s to Steven, a budding young photographer using recycled equipment to shoot black and white film. I can’t wait to see his work.