Have a seat while this old lady tells you a tale. Before the days of smartphones, people had to get their photography developed. I’m serious! You would have no idea what your picture would turn out like. Often, it would be blurry or just someone’s hand. Sometimes, during a party, the camera might go missing and then be returned at the end of the night.
With both curiosity and pre-emptive embarrassment, you would hop on over to the drug store and hand the little film spool to the person at the counter, and they’d tell you to come back in a few days or hours. Picking up that envelope of photos felt like hearing a big secret.
Some people still prefer having photos developed.
Over on Reddit, folks are discussing the shocking photos they discovered while developing other people’s film. Here are some of the wildest things they found.
1.
“Naked pregnant woman wearing a bart Simpson full head mask. 12 years ago and I’ll never forget it.” —lomiodien89
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“This actually happened quite recently, an old lady came in with her late son’s camera and a dozen of discs that she wanted to check if there would be anything in them. The first couple of discs had some old albums on them, the next 6 or so were full of porn from the 90s. I didn’t have the heart to tell this old lady who was over 80 years old that she was in possession of her late sons porn collection.” — Tombhur
4.
“When I was a photo tech for Walgreens, one of our regular customers sent in a print orderthrough the website. The customer was 50-something, short and round, and half the pics in her order were collages of her gaping, lubed up butthole, cheeks spread wide apart.” — Silvano_Devesci
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“Oddest one I saw was a bunch of pictures of a gas station. Inside, outside, bathroom, freezer, pumps. The pics were all cropped horribly and needed color correction. We usually only did this by request, but I was bored so I just did it. When the middle eastern guy came to get them he had very poor English, but explained that he was trying to send pictures to his wife and son in Iran. He came to the country to start a business so he could afford to bring them over. He drove 12 hour shifts for a taxi company in New York for 5 years to buy his first gas station and he wanted to surprise them and let them know they’d finally be together.” — basedonfacts
7.
“A friend of mine worked at Walgreens developing photos during high school. He said the best set of photos was of a child’s birthday party, a few photos in the middle of the parents having sex and top down views of a blow job, and then the continuation of the child’s birthday party. Edit: as another user pointed out below, ‘For those too young to understand how film works – this means the sex and blowjob must have happened DURING the party.'” — DrBasia
8.
“At the lab we used to do all sorts of services for businesses etc – nothing major we were a small operation. A guy came into the lab one day and printed some photos with us, 5 or 6 prints of him and his family, simple enough and off he went. He walked back in a few minutes later and called me out and asked me to laminate the photos, I said sure, no problem (a request often received). Though this was something more specific, he began to explain in broken English he was from Syria – now this was around the first year of the Syrian war , probably about a year into it – he gave me I think about 200 euros in 50 euro notes and said to me to laminate back to back the images and put this money in between it. I hesitate at first, a bit confused and he explained he cannot communicate this to his family, the government would stop the money going through, this would be smuggling it in – its for his family in the photos etc.” — mrgrif04
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“A couple years back when I was 18, I was a trainee at a small local photography shop. They developed films but also had those PC stations where you can print or develop your digital pictures. As I was just the trainee I had exhausting job to help the customers with the procedure because it’s a bit confusing. Most of the time those were just elderly women who wanted to develop pictures from their last family gathering or vacation. But once it was a really creepy older man. At first he seemed nice and polite and he looked like a well kept elderly Business man. But after plugging in you could see all pictures saved on the medium (like a SD card or an USB Stick). He wanted to select two innocent flower pictures or something and we had to look trough like 2000 files? But well, he had an amateur erotic photoshoot or something like that because there were many low quality pictures of him naked or half naked, with masks or leather lingerie for men. I politely stood next to him and scrolled trough the pictures for him because my boss advised me to do it that way, except the customer didn’t want to. But he simply watched me with a creepy smile and didn’t say something. I felt so uncomfortable and insecure and I never told my boss.” — gelbepaprika
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