Throwback Thursday, 1999, Yellowstone and...APS?

It's Throwback Thursday and this one goes back to the winter of 1999. I've written a few posts about the Yellowstone trips we used to do every year. Organized by my good buddy, Duncan MacNab in Bozeman the snowmobile trips went on for ten years.

Left to right - Bob Thompson, Karen Hart, Bob Nunn, Al Zimmerman, Skip Cohen, Andy Marcus and Terry Deglau

Me, Duncan MacNab and Bob Thompson

There's no way to describe the camaraderie that came out of these trips. And it's the perfect example of how photographs keep our memories alive and vibrant.

The funniest part for me, as I was looking through the images, was the camera I was using. Along with my Hasselblad gear, I had a little Minolta APS camera, which couldn't be more amateur! For those of you who never heard of APS:

The format was introduced in 1996 by Kodak, Fujifilm, Minolta, Nikon, Canon and others. APS was mainly used for point and shoot amateur cameras, although some SLR systems were also created: Canon EOS IX, Minolta Vectis, Nikon Pronea with Nikon IX lenses.

The whole idea was to give the consumer more control over their images and also increase the number of images people printed. When you got your film and prints back you also got a contact sheet showing all the images. You could print panoramic as well as regular prints. However, by 1999 everyone understood the format was a mistake and it was already on the downhill side of the market!

I remember being in one of my Hasselblad dealers shortly after it was announced. They were furious. When the product was introduced, even though the target was the amateur, sales of virtually all point and shoot cameras came to a screeching halt. Everyone wanted to wait to see what the new format would be like before they made a purchase. That meant the retailers had to sit on inventory longer than necessary.

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There's very little that beats good friends and a cigar at the end of the day. I'm not sure there's even a restaurant or bar you can still smoke in anymore!

The fun of Throwback Thursday is all in the memories and the back-stories each image creates. So, what are you waiting for? Take a few minutes and go wander through those old albums or shoebox of memory making images. Then, appreciate the moment and what your work means to every client!

Even better share a throwback images on your blog to make a point with your readers/potential clients. Photographs keep memories alive and for those special moments you want a professional behind the camera and shooting with something better than APS. (Ironically it was called the Advanced Photo System. Sadly, it just wasn't advanced enough! LOL)