Tag, Tagger, Taggiest

Bobbi tagged me probably because she knew I would do it and because she knows I Love photos.

Here are the rules...

Go to the place where you upload all your photos. If you don’t upload them online, just go to wherever you store your pics on your computer. Open the oldest album, and post the first photo. Then tell the story behind it. Then tag 3 people!

Here is the oldest pic on my portable external hard drive I carry everywhere with me. For example, I am sitting at Panera Bread Company right now enjoying peace and silence and getting work done while the kids are with a sitter. I think Panera is going to be my new office!

So here is the pic:

The story behind this is Emil's Studio. There used to be a photographer in Yuma, Arizona named Emil. (I don't mean to talk about him as if he is dead, he is alive, but he is in his 90's now and almost blind so obviously not still in business). He has taken pictures of my family for several generations. He took pictures of my mom as a young girl. My grandmother started a tradition with her grandchildren that my mother carried on until Emil retired. What they both do is take their grandchildren to Emil's studio when they are two and have some really great pics taken of the kids. Then they select their favorite to have done in a large oil painting. My grandmother has my generations of oils and my mother has her grandchildren's oils all over her house. They are so beautiful. The oils are colored, he did not paint the oils, he sent them out to be done. He specialized in Sepia Tone. He was a master at it! He did do color, but my mother always had him do ours strictly in sepia. The nice thing about doing that is that you can wear whatever colors you want and never have to worry about colors matching. For example...you would never know that my sister Charlie and I are wearing flourescent orange stripped dresses here....really we were! Flourescent orange!

Let me tell you a little bit about what going to him to have your picture taken was like: His studio was beautiful! It was a room that felt so big to me as a little girl, but I am sure if I visited it today it would feel very small. he had props hanging all over the walls. He had the neatest toys to keep kids happy and put a smile on our face. His camera was the best. He was a very small man, very short! He would climb up on this stool and put his head into this big camera with a drape over his head....one of those cameras. Can you picture it. He would get it all adjusted and push the button. He would stop, pull that negative. Readjust us, making sure every detail was perfect. then he would go back into his camera and take another picture. He was so amazing! He also was a pro at editing. All without digital and photoshop! He could edit out a mustache. One year my brother had this terrible mustache. My mom had Emil edit out my brother's mustache. He also use to be able to edit out parts of clothing that were in the wrong place and wrinkles on shirts. Could any of you imagine doing any of that manually in a darkroom without the ease of photoshop? Now it is all done with the click of a button or two. So that is the background behind this picture. He was an artist! Him and his wife lived, litterally lived at the studio. The studio was located in the older historical part of town. They still live there. My friend said they still have all their studio stuff up, even though they are no longer in business. She said you can walk by and look in and see all the portraits hanging in the gallery and then you can peek into the back and see his camera sitting in his studio. What a shame that such a fine art such as this style of photography is dieing. A lost art!!!

I Tag Tina, Linsey, and Nicole