Trudy, Then and Now

Trudy Pauluth-Penner is not the first client who has rebooked me for a shoot, but I was more than a little surprised to receive an email from her in August, 25-years after our last studio session.

Back in the nineties, Trudy and her husband, Ron, had both hired me for casual business headshots and returned with their children for a whimsical kids’ period shoot. From that I made a large, hand-coloured silver print, which I’m told still looks great. I also did promotional photos for their theatrical puppeteer group.

In her re-introductory email, Trudy told me she was still using the ’90s headshot (on her website, etc.) and figured it was high time for an update! What a wonderful chance to see Trudy and Ron again and an exciting photographic project in itself.

Trudy turned up with a slightly dog-eared but otherwise unblemished 5×7 from our first shoot, which we used at the end of the session to approximate the pose from 1995.

Beforehand, I’d searched the archives on the off chance I’d retained the 90s negatives. No luck. Before the last move, I shredded hundreds of old prints and negatives, so they must now be acetate confetti in a landfill somewhere.

But wait! Don’t I have a shoebox packed with negs in glassine envelopes — a kind of “no longer in service” file (which you’d think all negs are by now) and the last stop before the shredder? I found them there.

This, and other similar experiences, illustrate how analog photographic materials are easier to archive than their digital counterparts that theoretically exist somewhere in expensive electronic boxes of naughts and ones. Short of catastrophe or the evil shredder, they’ll last for generations, as will the archival prints Trudy ordered in addition to web-ready digital files sent via the Internet.

“I greatly appreciated the time together and reconnecting after all these years … still the best photographer I know !!!!” ~Trudy Pauluth-Penner