Courtesy of Kurt Schlosser

Emerson Schlosser, second from left, at Harvard Business School in 1934, the same year he started at Eastman Kodak Co.

By Kurt Schlosser, msnbc.com Entertainment Producer

For a story that has been developing over the past several years, I still had a hard time grasping the news out of my hometown of Rochester, N.Y., on Thursday. Kodak, the once mighty maker of everything having to do with the pictures on my walls, was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

I left Rochester almost 20 years ago, but the memories of what Kodak meant to the city, my family and why I love photography have been everlasting.

My dad’s father, Emerson Schlosser, spent 40 years at Kodak. He rose to become the superintendent of the roll film division before retiring in 1974. I remember getting packs of Kodak film wrapped as presents every year at Christmas. My dad says Emerson, who died in 2000 at age 90, “never realized what digital [photography] was” before his death. I imagine if I photographed him today on my iPhone and posted it to flickr before his eyes -- for the entire world to see in an instant -- he’d be a little speechless.

Courtesy of Kurt Schlosser

A cherished Kodak moment: Kurt Schlosser, with his mother in New York City in 1972.

As a boy I remember shooting on disc cameras and looking at a Brownie like it wasn’t an antique. My dad remembers developing pictures in a home dark room his father set up in the basement.

“We were a Kodak family,” my dad, Richard, says. “I can’t say Kodak came before everything else [for Emerson] but it was right up there.”

My mother, Kathy, and my father were both summer interns at Kodak. So was my dad’s brother. My mother’s mother Margaret worked in Kodacolor photofinishing, developing and printing people’s photographs for more than 20 years through the 1950s and ‘60s and into the ‘70s. My aunt spent 30-plus years as a managerial secretary. My wife, also from Rochester, counts her mom, dad and grandfather among the faithful at one time or another. It’s what people did. The stories are the same out of evolving company towns in Michigan and Ohio and across the country. Some people built cars or appliances. My family helped build … memories.

As it snows in Seattle this week and I look out at the fluffy blanket covering my yard, I remember playing in the yard of my childhood home, just blocks from one of Kodak’s industrial parks. Large smokestacks always left little black flecks of soot on the deep snow – something as synonymous with the town as that company. The soot never stopped me from eating the snow, and over the years, when I always chose the yellow box of film over the green one, I guess you could say Kodak was in my blood.

Related PhotoBlog posts

• Report: Kodak prepares for Chapter 11 filing
• Kodak struggles to reinvent itself in a digital age
• Please don’t take my Kodachrome away
• Photographer recalls Kodak’s fading moment

Follow @msnbc_pictures

George Eastman House via Reuters

George Eastman, left, founder of the Eastman Kodak Company, is shown with fellow inventor Thomas Edison. The 130-year-old photographic film pioneer, which had tried to restructure to become a seller of consumer products like cameras, has filed for bankruptcy.

The news that Kodak filed for bankruptcy protection Thursday saddened many, including (and maybe especially) the photographers who relied on the company's products for more than a century to record images both mundane and historic.

Almost anyone who shot a photo prior to the advent of digital photography has used Kodak film.

Gary Cameron / Reuters

Eastman Kodak black and white film, negatives, film development reels and black and white photographic prints.

Professional photographers relied on the brand from the early 1900s until the 1980s, when the company that invented the hand-held camera and rollup film began to lose market share to foreign producers. Cameras, lenses, film, photographic paper and other artifacts -- cherished by photographers and collectors -- remain as reminders of the company's contribution to the art of taking pictures.

Mick Cochran

An old Kodak film canister, photographed on Jan. 19.

Mick Cochran, former director of photography for USA Today, spoke with msnbc.com about stumbling across his own Kodak keepsakes.

Rummaging through a canvas bag inside his Rhode Island home, Cochran found an old film canister from the 1950s.

“Oh wow," he said admiring the well-worn item. "Look at that, you see the texture? The Kodak just pops. It’s the coolest thing.”

Photographers admittedly get a bit wistful when looking back at shooting and processing film, even though they enjoy the ease of digital photography, which Kodak invented but ironically never exploited.

"Anytime you could find someone to process your film, you would do it. Nobody wanted to be in the darkroom with all those chemicals. It was a rite of passage, it was messy," Cochran said.

"It was such an arduous thing we did. Digital came around and it was so much better and faster," he said.

Gary Cameron / Reuters

A collection of Eastman Kodak products.

Gary Cameron / Reuters

An Eastman Kodak Carousel slide projector, with 35mm color slide and film cannisters.

Cochran said that even though many people criticize Kodak for failing to keep up with the explosion in digital photography, he recalled that the Rochester, N.Y.-based company sent a team to Florida to interview photographers for what was the first digital photography workshop.

“It was fascinating,” he said, adding it was clear Kodak was trying to figure out what it was going to do with the new technology and how it was going to grow the business. 

"That big yellow K has always been a good thing, a quality product. You can’t deny their support of the photo business," Cochran said.

Chris Hondros / Getty Images

A saleswoman holds a box of Kodachrome film June 22, 2009 in an electronics shop in lower Manhattan in New York City. According to reports on January 4, 2012, if the Eastman Kodak Co. is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy-protection if it is unable to sell a cache of digital patents.

Those photojournalists among us who cut our teeth on Kodak film feel a pang of sadness every time Kodak makes the news in recent years. And the file photo from the late Chris Hondros reminds us how many great photographers preferred Kodachrome.

Reuters reports: Eastman Kodak is preparing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing in case it is unable to sell its digital patents to raise capital, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The once-iconic photographic film pioneer is in talks with potential lenders to secure about $1 billion in debtor-in possession financing to sustain Kodak through bankruptcy proceedings, the Journal reported citing unidentified sources.

Related:

• Kodak struggles to reinvent itself in a digital age
• Please don't take my Kodachrome away . . .

It's hard not to be sentimental about Kodak products and their role in our memory banks: the Instamatic camera, the Carousel projector, Tri-X and Kodachrome films and so much more.  What was your favorite Kodak product?

Related: Kodak retirees worry over healthcare and future of company

For years Kodachrome film was always the gold standard. When it really mattered, and you had time to wait, there was no better way to record history, capture a sunset or just shoot a portrait of the kids. The film's accuracy, stability and longevity were arguably unmatched for decades but the digital camera evolution has finally killed off the film that many photographers loved.

Starting with my first camera, I would buy a few rolls of Kodachrome whenever I could and wait impatiently for the slides to be returned to me after processing. Unlike today when you can see your results instantly, mistakes made with film, and Kodachrome in particular were costly. Each image was composed and the shutter pressed much more delibrately because you wouldn't really know until you opened up that yellow box whether you really nailed the shot.

Steve Hebert / The New York Times via Redux Pictures

A roll of Kodachrome film is fed into a slide-mounting machine at Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kan., on Dec. 28, 2010. The lab is the last one processing the 75-year-old film and will process the final roll on Dec. 30.

For the full story on the end of an era in Photography click here.