All my baby pictures are in black & white. That’s how what we saw in the viewfinder came out in the lost world of our pasts. My mind sees them in high contrast, blacks and whites and not much grey, maybe a little blurry or at least grainy. Then came Kodachrome (remember the Paul Simon song: “It give us the nice, bright colors. Give us the greens of summer.”), and the world was awash in color. And if we wanted black & white we had to buy special black & white film. Now, with digital photography, any color photograph can become black & white with a couple of simple clicks. But it doesn’t look like those old black & white photos I remember. They are all shades of grey, not the stark icons of my memory. These images are just a few examples of how I remember the black & white world.

I went to Florida to see where I had lived there, maybe play a little golf and definitely devour as many blackened grouper sandwiches as I could. Thought I would take some pictures of the place to keep as reminders for my failing memory. But all the time, there the kids were. In the back seat. On the beach. Sitting across from me and my blackened grouper. And I’ll be darned if that wasn’t me with a camera in my hands taking pictures of them. Where did it all go wrong? Well, it didn’t go wrong. Here are a few of the shots I got of them. You be the judge on which are the better memories.

Anna Maria Island is just south of St. Petersburg in Florida, over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. We spent the week there during Spring Break. These are some intimate images of the place. Pictures of the kids will come later. I had forgotten how much I missed the Florida life. I lived in St. Pete for a few years almost twenty years ago now. The light and the sounds and the taste of the air are all part of my memories. Going to the beach is something you plan here, but it is just something you do there. I was glad to have a small glimpse of that again during our time there.