Public places that develop photos see every picture you develop. Know it, believe it, and develop your photos accordingly. But oh goodness, thank God for the advancement of digital photography.
(Content has been edited for clarity).
You Thought Wrong
“I worked for a police department developing crime photos. I’ve seen my share of violence, but the worst was a motorcycle suicide. A guy drove without a helmet into a brick wall. Normally, heads smash like a watermelon on the pavement, and the bikers in shorts get skinned as they drag. But this guy, his head cracked. It was like a doll, the face intact and all the parts beneath it. Like you could glue it back together and place it back on the body.
After that I worked for an independent processor. We had one guy that took pictures of himself in the bathtub naked eating take-out food. I don’t know what fetish that is but we all gathered around to see his pics. We developed a lot of adult film and also did color correction for a major site at the time before digital cameras were mainstream (1996 or so). I saw more male junk than I ever wanted. The storefront had a mini lab and when the back was overrun, I’d be out front processing. I’d have to put a paper over the shoot out so no one would see. We also did all of the Mega Churches in the area’s photographs and it was my ultimate quest to see one of the churchgoers in the local adult film but it never happened.
I took up art modeling then after a few photographers offered. Yup, I was young, and everything was firm, so I didn’t care that my co-workers were developing portraits of me naked holding a sphere or outside covered in dirt.
The fact that I remember developing photos makes me feel so old. I remember arguing with a customer that digital was never going to make it because film was alive and able to capture emotion and pixels couldn’t.”
This Has Got To Be Illegal
[WAYHOME studio][1]/Shutterstock
[1]: https://www.shutterstock.com/g/WAYHOME studio
“I’m a photographer and work as a photo lab tech on the side. We didn’t have any weird rules about what you could develop. If it were legal, we would develop them. There are hundreds of stories I could tell, but here a few eye-bleach moments of my career. I’ll start with the most horrible to date.
A guy developed a roll full of the inappropriate child photos. I was swamped at the time, and he had ordered them to be developed in an hour, so I didn’t have time to call the cops. When he came to pick up his photos, I showed him few crumbled pieces of undeveloped paper and said we were having problems with our lab and took his contact information to ‘inform when we have his photos ready.’ I don’t know if he gave me his real information, but I called the cops, and they took the photos and the information, and I never heard of them after that. I hope they caught that jerk.
A roll of photos with a man getting it in from the behind by a huge dog, with ten or so people in a circle around him rubbing one off. I called the cops again, but they couldn’t dispatch anyone so fast. When he came back for his photos, I yelled and banned him, like he would’ve come back after that. I naturally threw his photos and negatives away.
A regular who took photos touching himself on food and eating it afterward. I learned pretty fast to not look at his photos when I developed them.
Elderly people developing the nastiest intimate photos you’ve seen. Nothing makes you gag like a photo of a century old junk in granny’s mouth. There were multiple counts of these like you wouldn’t believe.
Tons of fetish stuff. Most memorable was a guy who ordered a calendar with photos of himself oiled up and wearing nothing but high heels.
A regular from a hospital who developed photos of dead, malformed babies. I had nightmares about those a few times. At least he had the decency to warn me when he brought the photos for developing.
A peacekeeper developed a bunch of photos of unidentified corpses from the middle east. Also dismemberments and other nasty injuries.
Vegetables in every orifice, multiple counts. Carrot seems to be the most popular choice, in case you wondered.
I’ve also printed some cool stuff, like props to a movie on several occasions. Evidence photos and that sort of stuff.
Well, these are the few that popped into my mind at the moment. You get numb to everything after years of printing photos, so nothing surprises me anymore.”
Awkward, Very Awkward
“My first real job was at a photo lab. We had many customers who would come in at least twice a week, and we all got to know them pretty well. There was one guy who was a doctor, very good looking. We knew he went to Europe for a month-long vacation, so when he brought his rolls of film in we were all excited to see the pics. Right in the middle of the tons of scenery shots, there’s him, naked on a beach. No big deal, but I was young and had a tough time looking him in the eye after that.
I’m not sure if many of our customers knew we had to look at all their pics…there was a little old granny who brought in three rolls of two teddy bears in various intimate positions. That was awkward, too.”
FLASH!
“I used to work in the photo lab at a CVS. I once developed a few rolls of film from ‘Bike Week’ in Florida. The first few rolls were pretty normal; a few bikers posed together with a drink and then some bikes, another picture of the two guys in front of some bikes, more bikes, etc. Then I get to a few rolls which were entirely comprised of biker women flashing their chest. The way our store was set up, the pictures develop out of the machine, and just fall into a tray, in plain sight of the customers at the register. I didn’t know what was on the last two rolls; I just ran them through the machine, but an old woman I was ringing out noticed picture after picture of topless women flowing out of the machine. Half the women in the pictures were middle-aged and looked like they had never worn a bra. It was very awkward for the 16-year-old version of myself to try and deal with.”
Call The Detectives
“While I was still in school, I worked in a camera store, and we developed pictures. The printing technician called me upstairs one day to show me something he thought was quite odd.
This sweet elderly lady had handed in a roll of film and an old photo where the clouds kind of, sort of, but not really at all looked like God and wanted it copied. She was a typical God-fearing, elderly Catholic Irish woman. The odd thing was what was on her roll of film.
The shots were mainly of typical family pics taken in Spain; happy family group shots, grandkids playing, the usual. Except right in the middle of the roll were four shots of a guy in his mid-30s laying underneath a chair in a pool of his blood.
Naturally, I called the police, and they sent two detectives down to look at the shots. They were cool and decided to organize a little sting. When the woman returned, I was to stall her, while we called the detectives, who were waiting in a car around the corner. All went according to plan, and they met her when outside discreetly when she left the store.
The detectives were nice enough to come back and tell us the results. It turns out the man in the photos was the woman’s son, who was a raging lover of happy hour drinks. The photos were taken after a particular binge where he nearly killed himself. She took them to show him once he was sober at an intervention they had planned.
He died the week previous, and she had completely forgotten about the photos and fell apart when the detectives showed them to her. I’ll never forget it.”
Ma’am, That’s Inappropriate
“I work at a pharmacy/convenience store with photo processing. We’re located directly next to a KFC, and once upon a time, a shift leader from KFC spent her lunch break at our walk-up photo kiosk making an elaborate collage out of close-up shots of her private area. She spent quite a while in the store, with her photos in full public display, then had her prints denied because they were pages full of female genitals. Then she still came into the store regularly to buy smokes because KFC was right next door.”
A Whole ‘Lot of Mess
Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
“Oh, goodness. I worked as a photo lab supervisor throughout the beginning of college and saw some insane things.
We had a customer that had photos of his kids and wife alongside photos of girls from the party district in my city pulling down their pants so he could snap shots of them in their underwear or whatever. He’d request doubles of those shots and refused any and all blowups of cute photos of his kids.
Another customer took photos at her husband’s funeral, and one roll was exclusive of the coffin and body. She said she liked that one the most.
There was a customer that enjoyed blowing up his naked photos in one of those Kodak kiosks, and then he’d leave it for me with his phone number. He was banned from the store after the second time that happened.
One lady took photos of her shoes and shoe organizer. The same shoes, the same organizer, week after week.
Some parents would obviously have photos of a fun outing, and then use the last two or three photos on naughty photos of themselves. More often than not, those would be removed from the stack.
Someone even dropped off photos of a Klan meeting!
I was once treated to photos of a threesome, and it was not the kind of threesome that you’d want to see. It was two hirsute girls with this skeevy-looking guy that couldn’t have been taller than me, and he howled when I couldn’t give him the photos. LITERALLY HOWLED. He ripped down my camera display by the front register in anger and walked out with the negatives and three bottles of Coke. Good on him, I suppose?”
‘Take Them Away Officer’
“We had these printers that people could upload their pictures and print them off by themselves. We would collect the photos from the printers, bag them up and ring them up. Once a lady came in and worked at the kiosk for a few minutes. No big deal. Then her pictures started printing out. My coworker went to grab them, and as a store policy, we had to inspect them for any illegal activity. This lady had someone take pictures of her giving birth. On the business end. Every stretching, gooey, hairy, bloody moment. My coworker suddenly looked like he was going to bite concrete, so I went over and asked if he was okay. That’s when he shoved the pictures at me and told me he was going to take a break. Good GOD these pictures were graphic. I just bagged them up, charged the lady and tried to forget about it.
Another time, I was processing a disposable camera, and I was going through the shots to fix color, contrast, etc. Everything was normal until I got their ‘intimate time’ pics. Seemingly normal, but gross. That is until there were pictures of them getting it on with their kids in the room. It was sick. I immediately stopped processing, turned the screen off and called my boss to the department. He looked at a couple of pictures then called the cops. The people were doing the hour processing, so they were going to be back soon. The cops met them after they asked for their photos. They took them away, and that was the last I heard of it.”
What A ‘Development’
“I worked at a photo lab after high school, and a girl I knew in grade school had pictures developed of her new boyfriend’s MASSIVE JUNK. Good for him, he should be proud.
A friend of mine wanted to have her nude pics taken right after she turned 18, and didn’t trust anyone else to develop them (she was alright looking, but not my type). She had one photo where she ran at the bed where her boyfriend was lying and jumped, and they took the photo of her in mid-air flying towards the camera. It was funny looking, as her (very large sized) chest were flopping wildly.”
‘We Did That!’
Dave Clark Digital Photo/Shutterstock
“I worked in a small mom and pop photo lab in Texas. This man decked in head-to-toe camouflage dropped off a roll of film. He was a typical, rude, ‘watchu lookin’ at loser’ kind of man.
Almost the entire roll was him and three other guys wearing latex granny panties with built-in behind plugs, rolling around with each other. There was a mattress with a half-gallon of mineral oil next to it. There were a few pictures of a naked woman in a bathtub. I’m relatively sure that he believed this made him straight.
If you’re reading this, be nicer to guys that print your photos. Because print them, we did.”
Haunted Dreams
“I worked at a printer in the ’90s, and it was always a good day when you got young, attractive people processing their intimate amateur shots, and always a gross day when you’d get the graphic birth photos – both occurred about once or twice a week on average.
Notably weird ones:
This very timid looking civil servant type guy who would bring roll after roll of photos of Pamela Anderson taken by photographing his T.V. screen during scenes in Baywatch.
Biker funeral photos, where all his buddies took turns posing with his corpse holding bottles of Jack Daniel’s. Other funeral photos of people kissing dead grandpa’s head and stuff were equally creepy.
There was an angry, creepy bearded guy brought in photos of him getting down with his girlfriend covered in whipped cream. A whole roll of blurry close up shots of hair and white stuff. I couldn’t tell if it was his mouth or her beaver in half the shots. It still haunts my dreams.”
‘Ten Years Ago In Canada’
Olena Yakobchuk/Shutterstock
“While I was a photo lab tech, some pretty weird stuff came through the machine. There was one day, about a week before Christmas and I was in the front of the store sorting envelopes of pictures that were just developed when this old lady came rolling. She must have been in her mid to late 70s riding in an electric wheelchair/scooter thing, hooked up to an oxygen tank and looked so old and grandmotherly that I just wanted to hug her. She handed me a roll of film and said she would be back in about two hours to pick up her photos.
I started on them right away. I should have eaten lunch first. The first 12 pictures were of her family around the Christmas tree and wearing ugly sweaters. After that, there were a few blurry shots which I skipped over quickly, then all of a sudden there was a shot of 70-year-old grandma lady laying on her back, naked, spread eagle, her legs propped up on the bedposts. The next shot was pretty much the same, except that it was a more closer and detailed shot of her bat cave. There were a few point-of-view shots of the deed and her pleasuring the cameraman. In situations like that, I should have called the cops. But I couldn’t do it. So I packed up the family pictures and all her negatives along with a note saying something like ‘could not process negatives 13 to 24 due to overexposure, no charge for unprocessed prints’ and put her pictures in the quick pick up drawer. I saw her wheel in two hours or so later, and I hid in the back. I felt sick for the rest of the day.
Company policy stated that I was supposed to call the police in an event like this. My guess as to why was that it was subjecting people to intimate acts when they weren’t expecting it. Had it been religious or underage, this could have been a big problem. For myself and the company, I worked for. This was also over ten years ago and in Canada. So I’m sure things have changed a lot since then.”
A Reminder To People Developing Private Photos In A Public Place
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“CVS employee here and I ran the photo department for about two years during college. Three things:
We had a man drop off photos where he had naked children running around in some forest. As the pictures started to come out, the scene became more and more disturbing as he suddenly started appearing in the photos with nothing on but a t-shirt chasing the kids (I’m assuming there was another adult with him taking the pictures). We called the police, which then turned into the FBI showing up and arresting him on the spot after we showed them the pictures.
I have a weak stomach and don’t take very well to gore and things of the like. Some older women came in and had us develop up-close pictures of family members rotting corpse. Apparently, it was some Jewish ritual, she told us, but I told her she needs to warn people before submitting pictures of that nature. Thinking about it still makes my stomach turn.
My friend, who recently came out, worked with me in the department. We had a lot of good looking girls come in to get photos developed, and once in awhile, you would get that person who had nude photos of themselves doing various things. She would make doubles of the pictures and put them in an album that she stole from the store. The book started to grow to more than 100 pictures, and it started to make me nervous because it wasn’t hidden very well in the lab. She never took it with her, and I never understood why she even kept it, even if it was for giggles. But let that be a reminder to anyone developing private photos in a public space, someone might be keeping them. Then she became a police officer.”
At The Target Photo Lab
“I worked at a Target photo lab and only had one incident with photos.
We were instructed that if we were to run across any photos of children that could be of questionable origin to alert the store manager on duty (STL, Store Team Lead). So I was printing out 300 pictures for this one internet order, and I noticed some pictures of a girl about 4 years old. In one picture she was smiling, and the next picture she was topless. The next one was of her in a sweater, CLEARLY naked bottom and she was on her knees on the bed. My first reaction was that she was silly because she had a funny look on her face.
But there were MORE of these photos; some of her on the toilet, some of her NAKED, and some more of her in the sweater. While there were only about ten questionable pictures, the rest were of their family and just normal looking photos. While I wasn’t allowed to do this, I asked a co-workers opinion (he happened to be a supervisor), and he said I should call the STL.
So I called the manager. We looked at the photos (which was uncomfortable), and he determined that, while they were on the line, it didn’t seem there was anything wrong, but he told me that if I saw more of these photos, from that family, to call him and he would call the cops.
That was about 6 years old, and I can still remember those photos and the little girl’s face. It still bothers me that there is a chance I made a mistake on those.”
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