If you were lucky you got your negatives and prints back in decent shape and they were actually your pictures. But it wasn’t that uncommon to get someone else’s vacation or graduation pictures, and then good luck straightening out the mix-up. And pity the poor soul who received one of the dreaded “why your pictures look like crap” notes that were tucked in the envelope when disaster of some sort struck.
Filling out those processing envelopes, ordering reprints (try guessing which number goes with which image), indicating cropping for enlargements, and the emotion of picking up your prints are rituals many young people will never know. Nor do they have to worry about some young punk like me snooping through their images on a boring Saturday afternoon.
But wait. I think that’s why they invented Facebook.
This article was last modified on May 17, 2023
This article was first published on March 20, 2009
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