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Photographers Divulge The Strangest Images They've Developed For People

Photographers Divulge The Strangest Images They've Developed For People

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Back in the day, photographs had to be developed in labs, which means the people developing them got to see the images. And if you think smartphones and the internet gave birth to the weird and the naked, think again. Kids today will also never know the smell of film stores, which, if you remember, was amazing.

whats-that-s**t asked, People who used to develop photos for complete strangers as a job. What was the weirdest photo you developed?

Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.

Do people think developers don't look at their pictures?

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My best friend worked in the photo lab of a supermarket we both worked at during high school.

A police officer mixed up two rolls of film he had - one being his family vacation photos and the other being photos from work (gunshot suicide victim). That messed her up a bit.

Just the way the Lordt intended.

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I developed church directory photos. So many old guys standing behind their wives holding the wife's chest. Not even kidding.

Always, always look at the background in pictures.

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Posted this before so it may sound familiar. My dad isn't a career photographer but he's super into is as a hobby. He has the fancy, bulky camera with the expensive lenses and lights. He has basically professional grade equipment as a hobbyist. One of his co-workers was getting married and asked my dad to be a photographer along with a professional one they had hired. He went, took pictures with the proper angles and all that then went home to edit and send them out to his co-worker and guests.

He was editing a photo of the bride and groom dancing and was doing some kind of low light balancing in the background when he noticed something...inappropriate going on in the background. Between the bride and groom were the dinner tables in the background. A couple tables back, in the low, shadowy light of the photo, was a woman pleasing a guy underneath the table. My dad was at just the right angle when taking the photo.

Imagine being this passionate about trolleys.

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The trolley man. Once a week a middle-aged man would come in to have the photos on his SD card digitally printed. It was always photos of out of commission train cars. Anywhere in the neighborhood of 500-1000 photos each week of different trolleys. Figured it was a hobby of his that he enjoyed, but to drop $50 weekly on photos of trains stuck me as odd. To each their own though.

To be fair, Taco Bell is beautiful.

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Not me, but my buddy worked as a photo tech the summer before we left for college. He said about once every two weeks this guy would come in and get photos developed of Taco Bell products. Like, really nicely arranged on his dining room table.

Anything can be sexy if you try hard enough.

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I worked in a 1-hour photo lab in an Eckerd in the early 00s. We went through every picture that was dropped off and color corrected them so I saw EVERYTHING. One of my favorites was a picture of this larger woman in a mauve, velour mini dress posing on her hands and knees atop an HVAC unit behind her ratty looking duplex. It was so weird. Of all of the strange places to take "sexy" photos, that would not be the first choice.

I saw lots of other bizarre and random things in my 2 years there. Naked people, bizarre houses, dead people, the inside of chicken processing plants (which when taken with disposable cameras looked like something out of horror movies). There were lots of people who were regulars and so I basically had a rather voyeuristic view into the best moments of their life. It was an interesting job.

Some Avant Garde art best left to its devices.

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Weird is all about perspective. I managed a supermarket minilab 20 years ago when 35mm was still king. I loved it. *trigger warning*

One that stands out was a series from an art student. There was a 1950's subversive series of quiet desperation. She did black and whites, dressed in a vintage housewife outfit, complete with the hairstyle... and had her head in the oven to mimic suicide. There was another with the perfect housewife suicide by toaster in the bathtub image.

She did a Betty Page series, too.

Well, this is embarrassing.

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When I was in high school I briefly worked at the One Hour Photo at my local Target store.

For the most part nothing too weird, except for one guy who dropped off a disposal camera filled with close up pictures of his "bulge" in different pairs of underwear. He never came back in to pick up the photos.

"A 12-month calendar made of their friend passed out at parties." Genius.

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I worked at a Ritz years ago right around the time they started to disappear. There are really so many standouts. Some bros got a 12-month calendar made of their friend passed out at parties.

There was a guy who always came in with multiple rolls of normal family photos but one time the last picture was him reclining nude on a couch with cans of beer surrounding him as he gazed into the camera. I removed the red-eye for him and I don't know if he ever noticed. It's really a thankless job.

There were some bondage rolls on occasion dropped off by the most mild-mannered man but they were, like, VERY amateur snuff film style with this big giant cowboy and lots of strangers coming and going from the scene. I never saw the cowboy in real life; only in the photos.

I imagine there were a lot of questions.

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Slightly different perspective, but a few years ago one of my college roommates found two disposable cameras that had never been developed. We finally had the pictures made up about ~15 years after they were taken. Apart from a lot of group shots and alcohol, there was this one particular photo of a man and woman eating cereal at our dinner table completely naked. None of us have any idea who they were.

This is why you have strangers develop your photos.

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Last summer I scanned a boxful of my grandparents' old negatives. There was a whole roll of my grandma posing naked in the woods and by a lake... I remember every time I hear from my grandparents. (shudders). Maybe that's why people get strangers to deal with their pictures...

Imagine the inconvenience of having to pay to develop your nudes.

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I worked at a one hour photo back in the day.

So many penises. So. Many. Penises.

Even the eggplant meme isn't new.

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My mom worked in a photo lab years ago and these are the worst things she saw...

An infected penis piercing.

Jesus was supervising the preparation of the car.

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Worked in a photo lab for almost 10 years, lots of weird ones. My favorite was a guy who dropped off a standard 24 roll. The first 12 pictures were of an older car that he was restoring, in various angles and lighting. He had a portrait of Jesus that he kept moving so that it was in the bottom of each picture. The other 12 photos were of him having sex with his girlfriend in the car. The portrait of Jesus was not in those pictures.

Brought something hard to be developed...

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Not a developer but worked in a pharmacy that had photo service. This hot guy came in every week with rolls of pictures for development. One day I could not stand any more suspense...and peeked.

They were core sample photos.

Gets weirder...5 years later we move to a diff state. Guess who was our new next door neighbor? LOL. Geologists.

Must have been one special shoe.

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Saw all the normal stuff. Intentional nudes, peephole stuff, party scenes, or could just be fooling around.

The strangest? Had a guy who came in with an entire roll of a woman's shoe. Like 36 pictures of one single woman's shoe. Staged. Backdrop. The works.

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There is a level of devastation caused by being cheated on by a partner, especially if it's someone you trusted and have been with for a long time that people who haven't experienced it can't understand.

I've been lucky in that I've never been cheated on myself, but I've had friends who have gone through it. My college roommate told me it was the worst pain she's ever been in when she found out her boyfriend cheated on her, and she couldn't imagine anything worse.

It was indeed horrible. My confident, strong roommate was crying all the time and wondering why she wasn't good enough to keep her boyfriend's interest, even though that had nothing to with it.

Redditors agree that being cheated on is painful, but also are prepared to share things they think are emotionally more painful.

It all started when Redditor Darkterrariafort asked:

"What is something more emotionally painful than getting cheated on?"

Medical Helplessness

"Watching your most precious person die a painful and scary death and knowing there’s nothing you can do about it. F**k cancer."

– coastalliving40

"This. I watched my husband starve to death from gastroesophageal cancer."

"It was like watching a nightmare repeat of my dad all over again. 😞"

– NedsAtomicDB

Mama Who Bore Me

"Death of your child."

– NBA_Fan_76

"I truly cannot imagine a deeper pain."

– theawkwardmermaid

"Your child being serious injured by your ex, and custody court keeps forcing the kid into contact with their abuser."

"You spend years of your life dealing with court homework where you recount every excruciating detail of your own abuse at the hands of this person, in addition to the crimes against your child."

"It costs you about $100,000 in legal fees, and you still aren't able to protect your child. It keeps going on indefinitely, and perversely, your ex tries to send you to jail because the child runs away from them."

– JadeGrapes

"Being responsible for your childs death directly."

– Kanulie

"My father passed very suddenly and unexpectedly two summers ago. It was the deepest, unimaginable despair that it was almost like a dream. Being walked to the little room at the hospital where they let you know he didn’t make it on the ambulance ride was surreal and up to that point the worst moment in my life."

"One month after he passed, I was in a four wheeler accident with my then three year old. And we were alone as my husband was out of town. I wasn’t being negligent- it was just a terrible, terrible accident. But, in the chaos of being thrown off and being in complete shock, I thought the four wheeler was pinning her down. I was screaming at the top of my lungs and crying and trying everything I could to lift it up. Remaining calm simply wasn’t a possibility when you think you’re killing your own child."

"She wasn’t pinned-and actually didn’t have a scratch on her. EMT checked her out and I went to the hospital because I had ripped the top part of my thigh off trying to lift the ATV."

"The whole thing was eye-opening in the worst way possible. Because, I could never, ever, ever, ever imagine losing my daughter- especially to my own fault. What if she had been hurt or died that day? I would be living in my own constant hell. I didn’t think there could be worst pain that when I lost my dad, but now I know there is. Just the thought alone of losing my daughter brings tears to my eyes."

"Life is really rough sometimes. But it gets better."

– BoredMillennialMommy

Going Down

"Seeing a loved one go on a downward spiral and you can do nothing to stop it."

– New_me_old_self

"Extension of your comment: Seeing a close one(wronged by their protectors) going down the spiral."

"You tried to help them a lot but they dragged you down with them and left you not just empty but drained."

– Sullen_Wretch

So Hard

"Suicide bereavement."

"I lost my best friend in 2022. Found him. Everyday is a struggle to not be in my grief."

"I’d take 100 heartbreaks, 100 nights of going to bed hungry, and 100 punches right to the face just to have him back."

– KatastropheKraut

"It does. I got wasted and said far too much about myself once. One of my friends verbally smacked the f**k out of me, got me to see that people do care about me and that my relationships aren't all just superficial, really just hit my sorry a** over and over again with the idea that I'm deserving of love not because other people get something out of being with me but because I am a human being, and it slowly does get better."

"It stopped me, I was going to kill myself in two months on new year's."

"When I can't live for myself, I live for other people, even when I start doubting other people actually like me, I still don't do it or hurt myself at all, because there's always, no matter what I feel in the moment, a chance that they do truly just care about me."

"If I end myself now then I give so many other people survivor's guilt, I leave all the people I care about wondering for the rest of their lives how it all could've been different if they had just tried a little bit harder to help me. I won't elaborate now but I feel a similar sort of regret when it comes to a number of aspects of my own life. I could never leave someone with something so unfathomably more painful than that."

– pissandsh*tlord

Sounds Awful

"Mental instability. It's cruel because it's your own mind killing you, you can't run or hide and it's long-winded. I couldn't say a single event has been more emotionally stressful than what's happening."

– Country-Road--

"It’s like you’re dead in your twenties but haven’t been buried til you’re 65."

– Gmr33

Tragedy You Never Get Over

"Having your mother pass away in your arms."

– Repulsive_Cricket923

"Something similar happened to me when i was 4. My parents sent me over to get babysat by my grandmother and she sat on a chair and passed as i was sitting on the floor playing with my toys. I only thought she was sleeping at the time, but later learned the truth as i never saw her again."

– Lucidnuts

Just Done

"As far as relationships go, being abandoned by your former partner is pretty damn painful."

– heyitsvonage

"Mine did this to me after 2.5 years and it was f**king devastating, it took years to get over. He acted as though everything was fine, I was his everything, we were actively planning how we would elope after I finished my degree that term, and BOOM NO DO-OVERS YA DONE."

"It was immediately what came to my mind when I saw this post."

– paprikashi

My Work

"When someone steals your research, hands it in first, gets the high distinction, then everything you submit is plagiarizing that a**hat."

– StaunchMeerkat

"This is two steps worse than, "hey can you put my name on your paper too.""

– karmagod13000

Rather Be Cheated On

"When the person stays with you but they secretly still yearn for that other person (even if no cheating occurs)."

– Deleted User

I actually didn't think there was anything worse than being cheated on after watching my friends go through it.

I stand corrected.

Do you have any stories to share? Let us know in the comments below.

If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.

To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/

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