When I was a kid, taking photographs required faith. Not talent. Faith.
You had to believe that the picture you took would someday exist, that it would contain the subject you intended, and that no essential body part of yours (like your finger or elbow) had wandered into the frame like my uninvited Uncle Ed at Thanksgiving.
We didn’t know right away, of course. There was no way to “check the screen”. There was no screen. There was a camera, a click, and then a long, emotional commitment. First, you had to wait until your parents remembered to take the roll of film out of the camera. Then you had to wait until they made time to take it to the store. Then you waited for it to be developed (a mysterious process that occurred at discount stores). Then another week for them to remember to pick it up. By then, you had either completely forgotten what the photo was supposed to be or you had elevated it in your mind to the point that you expected it to arrive with a companion Guggenheim Fellowship offer.
This was not just a picture of you at the zoo. This was your legacy.
So, when you finally held that envelope in your hands and slid the photos out, slowly, ceremonially, and discovered your finger planted squarely in the center as if it had been waiting there all along, the devastation was profound. This wasn’t mild disappointment. This was grief. This was the kind of loss that made you sit quietly on the couch, staring at the evidence, wondering how something so small could ruin something so important.
Kids today will never know that feeling.
They take a photo, look at it immediately, and if it’s bad, they simply… take another one. No waiting. No hope. No emotional investment. They edit their pictures with such skill and precision that even their breakfast looks like it belongs in a museum.
I know this because my nephew recently went to New York City for the weekend and sent me photos from a bagel shop that made my carefully documented, life-changing trip to France at seventeen look like a sad elementary school vacation slideshow. His bagel had lighting. Texture. Mood. My Eiffel Tower photo looks like it was taken during a minor emergency.
I’m not bitter. I’m impressed. But sometimes I miss the old way. The way anticipation did half the work. The way disappointment took time to arrive, but when it did, it arrived fully formed, finger and all, reminding you that some memories weren’t meant to be perfect, just earned.
And if you ask me, perhaps that was the real filter. | 
