Last week I developed my first roll of film at home. My mom had given me a roll of Kodak Gold 200 (expired many years ago I’m sure), and I had taken some pictures I didn’t care all that much about on it. Kodak Gold, and all the other film I have shot thus far, is a color negative film, and color negative films are developed most commonly using a development process introduced by Kodak in 1972 called C-41.

My first exposure to photography was through my family’s rafting business. My dad would give my brother and I a cheap disposable camera one or two times each year to take pictures with. Being amazed with the fact that they were waterproof, we would usually waste fifty percent of the exposures on dark, murky shots taken underwater. Those waterproof disposables were very similar to the disposable cameras that my grandfather would carry with him constantly.