Isn’t it ironic?

The video above is one you might have seen already in the last couple of days, because it’s doing the rounds on the web. But if you haven’t it’s worth 4 minutes of your time, because in the week when Kodak filed for bankruptcy, this forward-looking video from 2006, which, in an amusing way, predicts with amazing accuracy all the things that would bring about the demise of the company, is, as Alanis Morrisette might say, ironic. I am a digital photographer, but my first steps into photography back in my early teens were, obviously, film based and more often than not I used Kodak film. It served me well up to the early part of the last decade in fact. Back then my photos were developed by whatever photo shop or pharmacy was nearby – in one hour if I was feeling rich, or in 24 or 48 hours if I was feeling patient. They were snaps and nothing more, and the concept of cropping was alien to me, so when Kodak brought out the Advantix technology ridiculed in the film above back in 1996 I enjoyed the novelty of getting to choose the aspect ratio of the photo as I shot it.  It further engaged my interest in photography, and in its own way helped to cement my determination to take and share pictures. It was a crude way of taking pictures that didn’t look like everyone else’s, for instance.  When you start managing to do that, well then you want to take more pictures that don’t look like everyone else’s.  It’s like a first step in finding your photographic eye.  I hope to root out some examples over the weekend if I can find them, and will share a few here if I do.