Reflecting on old, memorable glass

Still lit after all these years
London, ON
October 2023
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Among my many odd habits is this one: I don’t have the heart to sell or otherwise dispose of my old cameras once I’ve moved onto newer ones.

I suppose it’s because a camera isn’t just some meaningless piece of hardware to me. Over the years that I use it, I come to appreciate its unique quirks, its heft and balance, the way it feels in my hand, or even its sounds as I work through the controls.

Use any inanimate object for long enough and you’ll develop a certain degree of muscle memory, an innate ability to make it come alive without actually looking at it.

Besides, by the time I’m done with a camera, it’s got enough shutter clicks and dings in it that whatever I might get for it would fall far short of the sentimental value it holds for me. I feel cameras deserve to be out there, used and loved and marked up from the places they’ve been and the stories they’ve helped us tell.

So I keep them lined up on a shelf in my office, and they often attract attention from folks on Zoom calls or anyone who catches me in an interview or segment. Or I’ll just stare over at them every once in a while and muse about the chapters of my family’s life that each one got to help tell.

A camera is a fairly simple machine: a box with a shutter that lets light in - light that helps us tell stories and freeze memories in time. But over the years where it goes from a pristine wondermachine to a used up relic, it ends up becoming an integral part of the stories - our stories- that flow through the glass.

So it feels like the right thing to do to freeze these memory-makers in time, as well, to pay silent tribute to each chapter of our unfolding life.

It isn’t the actual object that we covet, after all. It’s what we choose to do with it along the way, and how it makes us feel.

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