I Love Corey, Chapter Twenty-two

As usual I’m indebted to Ernie. I’ve no idea why he continues to put up with me. I just keep making dumb mistakes and through his careful editing we manage to get rid of most of them. I truly don’t know what I’d do without his help. All I can do is extend my thanks to him for his work and help. Fritz

I Love Corey, Chapter Twenty-two

The week went pretty well. The only thing was that it was getting so that we never seemed to have time for ourselves anymore. Of course there was the usual school during the days. Corey had his homework and I had lesson plans to review and keep up. Throw in the ball game on Thursday afternoon. Add to that the fact that we now had shooting lessons for the pistol on Wednesday night and shotguns on Sunday and ammunition to reload for both pistols and shotguns and Corey’s art lessons and you can see that things were beginning to get a bit busy. No wonder I no longer had time to participate in a lot of my old hobbies. I hadn’t had my camera out to take any pictures in months. When I thought of that I suddenly realized I didn’t have any pictures of Corey. It didn’t take long to figure out I needed to do something about that. I mean after all, I loved him and had no pictures. How could I have overlooked something so important?

We’d gotten home from practice on Monday and I fixed dinner while Corey did his homework. It was while I was cooking that the lack of pictures occurred to me. I got my cameras out and continued with dinner. I’d resolved to start taking care of the picture shortage.

One of the nice things about being financially comfortable was that it allowed me to own some fairly nice photographic gear. When I came into the money, I eventually decided to upgrade my old Pentax 35mm SLR. What do you know? I’d looked at all the fancy models from Nikon and Cannon, and while they’re lovely cameras and certainly very capable of taking excellent pictures, I guess I was just used to working with Pentax. It’s not as cutting edge as its competitors. None the less, it’s a fine product and I wound up upgrading to a PZP 1. That allowed me to keep my old Super Program and all the lenses I’d acquired over the years. Add a few of the newer auto-focus lenses in the focal lengths I used the most and I was ready to go. I also decided to acquire a medium format camera and settled on a Hasselblad 503 CW with a few lenses. Fortunately, by purchasing the whole system at the same time I didn’t have to pay full list price. I might not have purchased it if I’d had to pay that kind of money for it. I will have to say it’s a lovely camera and, if I do my part, the pictures are superb. Now I was faced with the problem of what kind of pictures I wanted. The 35 mm was more than adequate for snapshots. If I really wanted to do something with the picture, the Hassey was the camera of choice. The bigger negative just gave one many more options. I decided to take some snapshots and try for some good pictures later.

When dinner was almost ready, I went to Corey’s room to tell him. I also took the 35. Peeking in the door, I saw him at his desk working on his homework. To say the flash of the strobe startled him is somewhat of an understatement. He was so busy concentrating on his math lesson that he had no idea I was even in the area. The way his desk sat I was able to get a picture of him from the back with his reflection of his face in the mirror over his dresser. I hoped it would turn out as I thought it might be a pretty good picture.

I think the only reason he didn’t hear the camera is because he had his stereo on and he was listening to it while he did his homework. It never ceases to amaze me that most kids can study while listening to the radio or whatever. That was one thing I had never mastered when I was a kid. It’s not that I couldn’t listen and do home-work, I just kept getting side tracked and would spend too much time listening and not enough time studying. That caused me problems with getting my homework done so I finally quit. After that, my grades improved some and I also had more time because I got my homework done much faster. I’d suggested to Corey that he ought to try it that way but so far he’d declined. Since his grades had been improving steadily, I hadn’t made an issue of it. 

Now you’d think the taking of a picture would be just that, the taking of a picture. Not so. Corey’s mother had never taken any pictures of him and therefore I was immediately swamped with questions about taking pictures, cameras, and when he’d get to see the pictures. He was excited about having his picture taken and was jumping around like the oft referred to ‘cat on a hot tin roof’.

I managed to snap a couple of more pictures before we ate. All through dinner he kept up a steady stream of questions regarding photography. I did my best to answer but in some senses it was like trying to explain an elephant to a blind person. Of course he’d seen pictures but never been around anyone taking any and had no idea of how a camera or film worked. It made me wish I’d used the digital camera. Finally, to shut him up, I told him as soon as the roll of film was exposed we’d develop and print it. All that produced was his suggesting pictures I should take to fill the roll. By the time we’d finished eating I knew I’d have to fill the roll of film so I could show him how all this worked. At least I’d have to partially fill it. 

I managed to get a few more shots of him and took a couple in the back yard. When I hit twenty exposures I told him that was enough for a demonstration. While it was a thirty-six exposure roll, film isn’t really that expensive and it was over half used. I told him if he would finish his homework I would get the chemicals out so we could develop and print the pictures. I knew he didn’t have much homework left and as it turned out I’d just barely managed to get the preparations done when he came bounding down the stairs to my darkroom.

“Are you ready?” he asked as he came sliding through the door.

“Just about. As soon as the chemicals get to the right temperature we’ll start. In the mean time, close the door and we can take the film out of the cartridge and put it in the tank.” 

After showing him the tank and reel, I explained how we’d load the film on the reel and put it in the tank. The tank held two rolls at a time and normally I didn’t bother to develop any until I had at least two rolls. I doubted that I could calm him down enough to wait that long. We turned the lights off and by the time I had the film in the tank and the lid on it, the chemicals were up to temperature.

I’m one of a minority. I shoot slide film. Most people shot color negative film but I like the results I get with slide film so I shoot it. I use both Ektachrome and Fujicrome. Both take E6 processing chemicals. Needless to say he was disappointed that it took so long to develop the film. He thought it ought to be done in seconds rather than minutes for each chemical and he about drove me nuts with his jumping around and chattering a mile a minute, all the while asking questions faster than I could answer them. 

When the film was finally developed and I took it out of the tank and held it up to the light so he could see the images on it, he was practically beside himself. I explained we couldn’t print anything until the film dried and we might as well have a snack while waiting. 

While he ate some cookies and I drank some coffee he kept up a steady stream of questions. To tell the truth, I was ready to tie and gag him by the time the film was dry. It wasn’t that I minded answering questions, it was the fact that I couldn’t even get an answer in edgewise. I’d get part way through an answer and he’d be asking another question. He couldn’t seem to sit still and his eyes were sparkling. I finally found out why he was so excited. 

Several years back his mother had said she wished she had some pictures of him but she couldn’t afford any. Her birthday was next week and he wanted to give her some pictures. He wondered if I would print some for her.

“No problem Corey. In fact, we’ll have to take a look and see if we can find some nice frames and a photo album. It might take a while to fill the album but we should have a few nice pictures to frame by next week.”

He’d finished his snack and we went back to the darkroom. I use an additive enlarger head. I like it for printing slides as what you see is what you get. You don’t have to build any fancy filter packs. If the picture needs a color in it, you add the needed color. 

Printing color negative film is cheaper but I like printing from positives better. It also made it easier to explain to Corey what I was doing and how it worked. He really liked it as he could see what I was talking about. It’s been my experience that it’s harder to explain about color negative film and color correction.

My first picture really turned out well. You could see him bent over his book studying. In the mirror you could see his face, his hair hanging down over his forehead with a pencil he was chewing on and an intent look of concentration on his face. I really liked the picture in that I thought it captured him but he didn’t think it was that good. He thought he should be smiling and posing for the picture. We argued about various pictures and I finally told him not to worry, we’d print all of them. 

By the time all the pictures were printed and processed, it was past our usual bed time. I quickly cleaned up the darkroom while he took a shower and got ready for bed. By the time I’d had my shower along with the usual brushing of teeth, he was sound asleep. 

He looked so peaceful sleeping that I got the Hassey out and put it on the tripod. I wanted this shot without the strobe. I didn’t want to disturb him and the normal room lighting made for a better picture because of the shadows. After a couple of shots, I gave up and went to bed. As soon as I crawled in beside him, he squirmed over, still asleep, and assumed his usual position. He put his head on my shoulder and his leg over mine. It didn’t take me long to fall asleep. He just felt so right laying partially on me. I could smell his hair and those two things made everything right with my world.

During the rest of the week I shot several rolls of film. I even took a few at the game which we won by two touchdowns. We still needed to come up with a way to consistently make the extra points but overall, I was happy with the way the team was performing. I even managed to get several pictures of Corey and his mother at the game.

I still wondered about Corey’s mother. She’d stopped making the payments to me on her car and I didn’t feel like pressing the issue as she might decide not to let him stay with me. Sometimes she seemed in pretty good shape mentally, others she seemed out of it. It almost broke my heart when she was having one of those days in which she was somewhere out in left field. You could just see the pain in Corey’s eyes on those occasions. Conversely, when she was having a good day, Corey was bubbling and happy. On her good days it was obvious how much she loved him. On the bad days one would think he was only an acquaintance. I’d tried to suggest to her that she might be better off seeing some kind of counselor or checking out a substance abuse program but so far she wouldn’t admit she had a problem. I knew that she could only be helped when she was ready to admit she had a problem and was ready to seek help. I hoped that would soon happen. While it might result in Corey no longer living with me, I knew he loved his mother and that if she straightened herself out he would be happy living with her. I just hoped he would want to have me in his life. By now I couldn’t feature my life without him. In the meantime I’d just have to do my best to let him know he was great person and was loved. 

The change that had taken place in his attitude since I had been taking care of him was amazing. He was an altogether different person. He’d been so quiet and withdrawn when I first met him that it was hard to believe he was the same person now. All his teachers had commented on the change. His grades were improving and he laughed and talked and seemed to be accepted by the rest of the students. So far we hadn’t hit any issues over which we disagreed but I expected that would come as he became more confident and accepting of his place in the world. I’d noticed that he would even disagree with me now. So far it had produced no real problems but I figured that one of these days he would have something that he felt strongly enough about to produce a real conflict. As long as we could keep it a logical argument I figured we’d be able to work things out. Guess we’d just have to wait and see.

After the game he went home with his mother. I figured that since I had the evening free I’d see what I could do in the darkroom with some of the pictures. A couple of hours of fiddling around with that first picture I’d taken produced what I was after. If I’d been using black and white it wouldn’t have taken as long and probably would have produced a better picture but I was happy with the results of my work. Using a soft focus enlarging lens and a few tricks I’d learned over the years produced an almost surreal picture. I hoped his mother would like it. I know I did. 

I made a couple of more prints of it and looked at my watch. I couldn’t believe it had gotten so late. It was after midnight and I’d been working in the darkroom for over four hours. If I could only find appropriate frames over the weekend I figured Corey’s present to his mother would be a hit.

When he showed up for breakfast on Friday I showed him the picture. He couldn’t believe the results I’d gotten. He hadn’t been impressed with the slide but the print was a different matter.

“Wow. How did you do that? I can’t believe that picture can look so good.”

“I told you that I thought it was a good picture. You just need to listen to me once in a while Corey.” I was grinning so he’d know I was needling him. 

“If you’d told me it was going to look that good I wouldn’t have told you I didn’t like it. Do you think you could make one like it for me?”

“One step ahead of you. That one is yours. I also made one for myself. We’ll have to find some frames this weekend. Do you think your mother will like it?”

He seemed to think a while before he answered me. “I think she will love it. I know I do. How’d you do that? It looks different this time.”

I told him I’d show him the next time we worked in the darkroom. I wasn’t about to try to explain dodging and burning without being able to demonstrate. With that it was time for me to head to school.