Say Cheese

I was at CVS yesterday waiting to pick up some photos. I still use a "real" camera with manual focus and film. Anyway, the one-hour photo service is apparently a sham, so although I dropped my film off at 2 and went to get it at 6, it still wasn't ready. Wasn't in any hurry, so I stuck around for a few minutes while they scrambled to get the pictures together. It was then that I realized that the people processing the film get the chance to look at all of my photos. Not like this was a shock to me, but I've never really thought about it. You drop off your film, you go pick it up, and then you open the package as if your eyes are the first to see the results. But one or two 18-year-olds ("pull up your pants!") likely chuckled at your photos... you just didn't see it happen. And it's not like i had any embarrassing pictures (well, there was that one shot where i painted my penis blue and white so that it looked like an elongated smurf), but watching a complete stranger go through my pictures was a very strange feeling. I guess it's similar to restaurants - you place an order, the food comes, you never see it being prepared (except for sushi bars), and you don't want to see it being prepared. But maybe it's just me - guess I like the suspense - and I'm definitely on the strange side. So stick with digital cameras or shake it like a polaroid picture... or not.

And why can't this be every day?