A Summer in Bloom: Capturing Backyard Memories on Film

In spring 2023, I got the urge to pick up my film camera (a Canon Rebel I got in 2000 my sophomore year of high school). I think I did it because I was excited about a non-work creative venture and at the time, my yard was filled with California Poppies and I wanted to "save" them. Once I got the images back I was obsessed and I couldn't take enough photos of my growing garden and, of course, my growing kids.

Film is slow and the gratification is delayed (a lot like a garden!), but the results are so worth the wait. I find deep joy in reliving the memories weeks later, and I love the color and light that my film camera is able to capture. While my iPhone is amazing and I use its camera all the time, it is sometimes too smart and focuses or blows out images in a way that doesn't feel quite as interesting to me.

The way I develop film these days is to mail it off to a lab in Utah (The Find Lab — they are great). A few days later they develop the film then email me scans of the images. While it's very different from the 2000 process when I would drop my film off at the 1 hour photo counter in my local drugstore and then wander the aisles until it was finished, it's just as exciting. I click through my scanned .jpgs with the same baited breath that I used to flip through my glossy 4x6 photos. Some are duds (of course!) but one or two on each roll make me gasp with delight. As soon as I got the first images back in May 2023, I knew I would be printing a book. Artifact Uprising is the best in the biz, and your Layflat Albums are true heirlooms. I hope my grandkids gasp in delight as they page through this in 30 years.

In the summer, my kids are home and the days are long. We spend a lot of time in the garden in the morning and evenings and in the pool in the afternoon (it's bonkers hot here). I love that they get to witness the process of how a tomato grows, but mostly I love that they get to see me doing things I deeply enjoy. Hobbies matter! I am so grateful to have cultivated mine, and I hope I am encouraging them to find their own.

Gosh... all of them?!? Let's look at some spreads though —

What I loved most about designing the album was picking the images that would go side by side. I paired photos of my daughters with sunflowers very purposely.

First, my younger daughter is just peaking out in the greenery. I thought that looked just like the face of the sunflower. And then in the second, my older daughter has her face to the sun, just like my sunflowers do on the right.

I also loved highlighting photos in a row to show a collection of things. You can see the results of some of the harvests below. And then of course, I had to include some images that could take up the whole page. My late summer tomato harvest is a forever favorite.