Kodachrome.  That name stirs up many emotions.  Floods the mind with many images.  Countless of them that you’ve probably seen at some time and point in your life.  Time, Life, National Geographic, all had photographers who shot with the iconic (I don’t even think that that word does justice to the emulsion) Kodak slide film.  Paul Simon sang “Please don’t take my Kodachrome away”…but Kodak did, no longer producing the film or the infamously toxic chemical process used to develop it K-14.

A little over 5 years ago, I found myself in a closing Ritz camera store in the Grapevine Mills mall.  They were trying to unload everything that they could, including rolls of expired film of all kinds.  Black and white, Fuji color, Kodak color print, different slide films, 110 (when’s the last time you’ve seen 110 film??).   Digging through the bin, I didn’t see anything that caught my eye….until I saw a couple of boxes of K64, expiration 2003.  I grabbed them (there were actually alot more than the two I picked up…why didn’t I buy more rolls is beyond me), and I was off.  I knew that it was hard to get Kodachrome processed then (I believe that Dwayne’s and one other place still processed K-14 at that time), and I knew that I would have to make the images count, that I had to use them for something special (so I thought), so I brought them home and threw them in the freezer, to be thawed out for that imaginary occasion in the unknown future.

Those rolls sat unused for 5 years.

When the announcement came from Kodak that they were ending the 75 year production run of the film, and support of the K-14 process, I knew that I couldn’t wait forever, that I had to shoot something with the film.  The imaginary special occasion was the experience of using this film, and being one of the last groups of people to have Dwayne’s process it (my film made it there around Dec 10th).  I shot one roll of K64 (the other roll I gave to Grant Meeks for him to have fun shooting some Kodachrome) and a roll of K200 that I found laying around(I have no idea when or where I bought it!).  I decided to shoot the K64 as an exercise in seeing and shooting with limitations; one body (My trusty and war torn Nikon F3), one lens (one of my favorite Nikkors, the 20 2.8 ais – really a limitation in seeing, shooting with only an ultrawide angle lens).

***The First and Last frame***