Wednesday, March 3, 2010

331/365 Pen pal trinkets

Did you have a pen pal as a kid?

I had several, but I kept in touch with one named Caroline for ten years or more. We wrote letters regularly (several times a year), sending each other little trinkets, cassette tapes with messages so we could hear each other's voice, photos... her stories of her small town in Texas were fascinating as a kid.

I actually still have every single one of her letters in a dedicated shoe box. I've tossed all my other pen pals' letters in various spring cleaning purges over the years, but I can't part with hers.

The little bottles in this photo (they're each about 4-5 inches tall) are old-style perfume bottles that I got during the time I was writing to Caroline. I got us each one of these at a little mom-and-pop gift store in a small town, and sent her one as a gift ("We each have one now!"). I think of her every time I see them.

For this long-exposure photograph, I used the light from the TV in a dark room to light the bottles.

Did you have a pen pal? Or two? Or ten?

Camera: Canon 40D, 4 seconds, f/4 at ISO 100, lit by the glow from the television.

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