Nativity Scenes: a snapshot.

before I tell you the story of this nativity scene I'm going to share with you a cautionary tale.

Remember the cruise I mentioned in my last Nativity Scene post? Well, I didn't have a digital camera at the time and my fabulous travel companion didn't either. I vaguely remember having a discussion about how we should just take one camera and then split the cost of film and developing the pictures. It seemed like a very logical idea at the time. only one camera to keep track of. We chose mine ... or I chose mine. probably the latter because I'm slightly bossy. Anyway. I took the camera. We used I think 6 rolls of film for our seven day cruise and had the best time. We got back home and headed straight to wal-mart. yes. STRAIGHT to wal-mart for film developing. one hour, of course. we were in a hurry to relive our vacation. We get them back. they were all blurry.

wow. I can't even begin to explain how mad we were. The wal-mart film developers were of little help and seemed to think we should have known there'd be a problem with the film.

it seems every time one of us carried that camera through the ship's metal detector we fried the film. seriously, we had no idea that metal detectors did that to film. On the he cruise line's website's FAQs was a blurb about don't worry if you forget film, we have some for sale in the store. but no warnings are taking said film OFF the ship. geez. I felt like an idiot for not knowing this because, sure enough there's all kinds of camera and film canisters that protect film from metal detectors.

so, I know most people have upgraded to digital, but in case you're still a film user [and you haven't heard this before] metal detectors are bad for film. seriously. lesson learned. the hard way.

SO. this is a nativity scene that was set up in Mexico right off the cruise dock. That's our ship in the background. It's hard to see the details [bc of the film blur] but it really was so neat to look at in person. It was after Christmas but still up because it was before Epiphany. yes, I count it in my collection.