Picture Post, Sunday May 21, 2006

I have begun to scan and archive some of the many thousands of 35mm slides and negatives I have. To add to that, I also have all of my Father-in-law’s 35mm slides from all the years he took them. It is a massive job, and I can only deal with the sheer magnitude of the task by doing the ones that interest me at whatever time I feel like scanning. I just have to be careful to be organized and keep track of which images are done and not done. It is too tedious a task to either have do-overs or to miss some shots.

Anyway, this weekend I have done a few from my childhood. A family vacation in Destin, Florida in summer 1966 when I was three and a half. I include these slides because I was able to take slides that were so dark and out of focus as to have never gotten a good look at them, and with the help of Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0, resurrect them, so to speak. These were unusable images that are now precious because they are now visible.

Spiffy neato.

These first three images were 35mm slides that were so dark they couldn’t be seen well even if projected. I have a Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II scanner I used and then used Elements 4.0 to fiddle with the scans ‘til I had made them into visibly pleasing photos.

This first one with (l to r) me, Mama, Big Brother, and Big Sister was the worst one. All you could see of the people in the pic were vague outlines. Cool huh?
This next photo is of Big Sister, Me, and Daddy. I can’t stop looking at this one because I was never able to see it well enough to get visual information from it. I remember hanging on to my father because the little fish in the water would touch my legs and freak me out. What a wimp.
This one is cool because it’s just me and my Dad. Plus it was the only time in my life I had a documented six-pack. Check them abs out, would ya!
For kicks I scanned some B&W negatives of Lovely Wife’s old family poodle, Dixie, so this image is of her. This was one sweet and cute dog.
This one is a B&W negative from one of my college photography classes in the early 1980’s. Enlarge it and tell me what you see. This is a picture that I took of natural objects, but the image is deceiving. You are not looking at what you think you see at first glance. If you can tell me what it is, leave me a comment. It’s not brain surgery, but my photography instructor loved this photo and had me mount a copy which he displayed in the hallway of the art building on campus.
This last one is a scan of a B&W negative. I had taken a picture of a picture of my paternal grandmother. This picture was taken in around 1915. The original photo was a print that was horribly scratched. I’ve begun my fix with Elements, but have a ways to go. I’m including this because I feel like it. She was the person who told me about Jesus and instilled in me a desire to know God. Many Christians can point to someone in their family who prayed them into The Kindgom of Christ. Mamaw Eunice is the one who did that for me and my siblings. She was about 3 or 4 here. I remember her telling me that she was mad for some reason or another, so she refused to smile.