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Time travel for everyone. We can all do it, but rarely take the opportunity to do so. Like many worthwhile endeavours, time travel requires planning, patience and long term commitment
What if you could travel back in time and see
But of course, you could easily travel back in time and see all these things. Just look at your photographs. But you don't have such photographs, do you? That's what I hope to change with this article.
Photography is now simple, cheap and convenient. It's very everydayness can blind us to its real power. The power to freeze time. We are fooled by the slow pace of change. People and places change so slowly that we often forget that they do. You take a photo and big deal, it looks just like the scene that you see everyday. How boring!
So we don't take photos of everyday situations, just special occasions like vacations, birthday parties, the Orchard Road Christmas light up. Sure, that's fine, if we do. But how many of us even do this bare minimum?
And as some of the hypothetical scenes above show, it's the everyday things that can mean the most to us, especially events of more than ten years ago. Because that was what our lives were really about, not the lanterns in Chinese Garden or some mountain resort thousands of miles away .
When I was small and my grandmother was still alive, we used to visit her in her old shophouse in Ipoh. I have fond memories of the shophouse. There were oily, wheezing, clicking printing machines on the ground floor. The top floor had a wooden floor and you could feel it shake whenever anyone walked. There were no real rooms, just wooden partitions that were nailed together. The doors were fastened with a metal hook. The top floor overhung the entrance and there were two holes drilled in the floor for you to look down and see who was at the door without having to go downstairs.
There was no toilet. We used enamelled chamber pots that were emptied out into the drain in the alley behind. We bathed in a sheet metal stall behind the kitchen, bailing water out from a waist high earthenware pot that was full of cold water even on the hottest afternoons.
In the afternoons, my grandmother would mix Milo with Nestum for us kids. Delicious! She poured kopi-o for herself, from a pot that was never empty which she kept on a side table. We would sometimes steal a cup from the pot and savour the thick, sweet brew.
A few years ago, the shophouse was torn down. Do I have any photographs of it or my grandmother mixing drinks? No, that was too normal to be worth wasting on a photograph. When we were there my parents only took pictures of us at flower gardens and fountains and limestone caves. Fun and unusual then, but not so meaningful now. My grandmother? She rarely left the shophouse, so there are few photographs of her.
If you don't have your camera with you, you won't take pictures. Why spend $500 on an SLR and use it twice a year? The most important step to becoming a time traveller is to keep a loaded camera with you at all times. If not, you might see a scene worth capturing and then think, "But I don't have a camera with me" or "I'll have to go and buy a roll of film first, why bother" or "But I won't be able to finish the roll, so I'd better not start".
You should be able to finish off a roll of film at least once every six months. A roll every month would be better - giving a finer grained picture of your life. It is possible to keep film in your camera for at least for six months with no noticeable image degradation (I know, some people say one week. Try it out for yourself and see). So don't worry, be prepared. Carry a loaded camera and a roll of spare film every day.
Including the price of the negative and the printing cost, each photograph costs about fifty cents. Would you pay fifty cents for a glimpse of your past? I would. Why take the chance of missing something? Be kia soo!
The camera that you use can affect the results, but don't get hung up on that. If you don't want to buy an SLR, don't. Someone who uses a disposable camera and takes a roll of film every month is better off than someone with an expensive SLR but only takes photos on vacations.
If you find carrying a camera around to be too much trouble, at least keep a loaded camera at home.So the next time relatives come over and visit, or your dog looks sooo adorable with your shoe in his mouth, you will be prepared.
What is needed is to see today as we might want to remember it in the future. Today's normality will be a priceless nostalgic memory in twenty years. The future's past is here now. Use the magical time machine and gather whatever memories you can. For in the end, that is all that any of us can hope to have.
Photography is not about fancy hardware or pretty pictures. It is about travelling back in time, documenting your life and the lives of those around you, leaving a record for future generations. Serving as a continuing reminder, that all is fleeting.
Preparations
Photographs to take
After you finish the roll of film, immediately load another roll into your camera.
In our next issue: Time Machine - #2 Organising the Flood