Picture perfect: Filmmaker reunites family with long-lost film after finding old camera

In the age of instant pictures and filtered selfies, it’s easy to forget there was once a time when it took weeks to have a roll of film developed.

That world isn’t so far away for Ryley Konechny, a 27-year-old filmmaker and photographer with an affinity for old cameras.

He stumbled across one at a Value Village in Saskatoon a few weeks ago, still with an old roll of film inside.

“Whenever I see one, I tend to pick it up these days because more people are tending to do it now,” Konechny said of his thrift store find. “I’ve made the mistake of passing up on cameras.”

Something about that roll of film spoke to him, enough to spend the $20 or $30 to develop it.

“I’ve run across film in cameras before at Value Village and I was like, ‘Should I? Should I not?’ … but (there was) something about it this time,” he said.

Konechny took the film to the store to get it developed, warning the staff at the counter that he had no idea what might be on it to “absolve” him of what the darkroom might uncover.

To his relief, the photos revealed a happy family lounging outside at a cabin and snowmobiling on an icy lake around an ice shack, and a woman looking very proud of some fist-sized tomatoes.

“I scanned them and then put them on Facebook and then half an hour later I was getting a bunch of names thrown at me,” Konechny shared.

After posting the photos on Reddit and on an “Old Saskatoon” Facebook group — garnering more than 50 comments and hundreds of likes — Konechny got a message from Lincoln Turtle.

His parents, Marla and Bill, owned the camera. Marla was the lady holding the tomatoes.

Marla Turtle holds up a photo of herself with some tomatoes she grew back in 2006 on Jan. 17, 2023. (Libby Giesbrecht/650 CKOM)

The Starbucks on the corner of Second Avenue and 25th Street in downtown Saskatoon was the unforeseeable meeting place for a trip down memory lane on Tuesday night.

For the Turtles, the music in the background and the sounds of baristas foaming milk and using the espresso machine fades away as Konechny produced a stack of long-forgotten photos taking them back to 2006.

In their 70s, Bill and Marla fondly remembered the friends in the images, some who’ve since passed on, trying to put names to faces and reminiscing on the cabin they used to own, as well as the ice shack they still had.

They recalled the day one of their friends, an ex-RCMP officer, put on his Mountie uniform to teasingly scare some U.S. tourists who were being bothersome to their group.

“It’s pretty amazing,” Marla said, adding each of the photos is a clear memory she still has today, though she completely forgot about the camera and the missing roll of film.

“Pretty neat,” Bill added, examining the photos Marla handed to him after she’d taken a look.

Their adult son, Lincoln, looked over his mom’s shoulder as she studied the photos. He said he and his brother had spent this time in their lives, now 20 years ago, in Quebec. It was exciting for him to see a visual record of what his parents were doing in their absence.

A family member the Turtles referred to as Aunt Kathy appears in some of the images. She has since passed, all three of them share, laughing at seeing her relaxing in an outdoor lounge chair with a caesar in hand.

“We were a little bit nervous about what might be on the pictures,” Bill said, laughing along with Marla and Lincoln.

“It’s our friends,” Marla said laughing, to clarify Bill’s comment.

Bill and Marla examine the old photos returned to them by Ryley Konechny with their son, Lincoln (left) at a Saskatoon Starbucks on Jan. 17, 2023. (Libby Giesbrecht/650 CKOM)

The camera wasn’t the Turtles’ first piece of photo technology, but it was their first decent one. It was originally purchased to be a family camera and eventually replaced.

After a few moves around the province and a garage sale, it made its way to the donation box at Value Village in Saskatoon.

It’s now found a new life with Konechny.

“You can never have too many film cameras, I think,” he said with a laugh, adding the camera fits perfectly in his pocket.

He’ll use the device for photos in daily life, just pulling it out whenever the mood strikes.

The Turtles, exceptionally grateful, thanked Konechny profusely from across the Starbucks tables, offering to pay for the development cost of the prints.

Konechny wouldn’t hear of it, but did ask to snap a photo of the three to document the memory of the evening on the very camera that brought them all together.

“If it wasn’t Ryley, I mean, most people would have just found that and thrown it away,” Lincoln said.

The following photos from the film are supplied by Konechny.