Hold on baby, mama needs you

It's funny the attachments we form to inanimate objects. Some people love their cars enough to spend entire weekends in the garage. For others it may be a pair of shoes that make them feel sexier than ever before, or the fishing pole that reeled in that trophy bass.

It makes sense, if you think about it. Those things do something for us. They excite us, show us a good time, or just leave our feet aching. What makes those bonds even stronger is that in some way they define us as "car guy" or "fashionista" or "fisherman." Amazing how these simple objects can help us define ourselves in the world.

My inanimate object is my camera. My definition, "photographer." Holding her I hold the world. And I can show others the world the way I see it. She's gotten me into places I shouldn't have been, and inspired me to go places I might not have. She's made me money, and cost me a lot more. During my deepest, darkest funks she's called me to go out and play.

Our relationship is so simple. We have fun and try and hang out as much as possible, but neither of us is angry if we simply can't make time for each other. I can be myself around her, take risks, and take shots that may or may not work out. So now with a dark cloud looming in the viewfinder I don't quite know what to do.

I'm rationalizing it right now, begging and pleading for it to not be so. I haven't moved very far through the stages of grief. I'm hovering around denial and will be staying there for a while. I refuse to believe that the ominous darkness showing up randomly in my images could possibly be my shutter taking it's last exposures.

It's not that I can't replace her, I can, rather inexpensively. Everyone tells me to give up on film and just "go digital" but I don't want to. The magic of photography for me was always the excitement of waiting for film to come back from the lab. After I developed my first roll of black and white in the high school dark room I was done. The wonder and awe I felt pulling a roll of exposed film out of the canister was like that of a native of the tropics seeing snow for the first time.

Film is so real for me. When I die someone is going to find a binder full of negatives that prove I was here, and I explored, and loved, and cared. Cared very deeply about writing with light. Negatives are something I can hold onto, and there isn't much like that in the world anymore. The same can't be said for a laptop full of digital files. It's simply not the same. Magnetic memory, while cheap and effective, is not that reliable, or resilient.

I've been here before with Kitten, and it was just as scary then. I had taken her to a repair shop for a quick once over just after I bought her. Holding her up to check her shutter speeds, the repairman gave me grim news. Her shutter was shot, and repairs would be $800, at least. He reasoned that at least I didn't pay much for her, and asked me to wait while he answered the phone.

Sitting in the waiting area with my then fiance I was crushed. I finally had a nice camera and it was worthless. My fiance paced the waiting area like a parent in the hospital waiting for what he knew was bad news. I just felt sick, sick and defeated.

After his phone call ended the repairmen picked up my camera. Sheepish sounds came from his mouth as he realized his error. The shutter wouldn't actuate unless the door was closed, or at least the door pin was depressed. My new baby was going to make it! I was once again as jubilant as the day she arrived. We made it out of the hospital that time, I can only hope the same can be said for this time around. I cannot afford to lose her, in more ways than one.