Picture Post, Sunday, August 20, 2006

When I dug out my black and white negatives, shot the first time I was in college, trying to find the pic I posted of Don C. (my Father) on Friday, I ended up scanning some other ones as well. I had taken a B&W photography class for an easy A one semester, because I had done darkroom work on the yearbook staff in high school.

I have been trying to get better with manipulating images in Photoshop Elements 4, the po-man's Photoshop, and I picked a few old black and white negs to fiddle with.

Good or bad, here they are. These all would have been taken around 1983; fall semester I think, because one of the pics has Santa on a billboard.

Give these a click, and let me know what y'all think.


Oooooooooo. Spookay.
Another one of Don C. My voracious appetite for books was a genetic certainty. Both he and Sainted Mother have read quite a few over the years.
Younger Brother, back in the day, showing me how to do a bunny hop on his Diamondback Rattler bicycle.
I'm gettin' all artsy-fartsy with this one. Hey, I WAS taking a class. I wanted to take the kind of stuff our teacher kept showing us. I liked the way the pottery shard was one shape, while it plus it's shadow looked like a duck's foot. Also the textures of the concrete and the pottery itself.
Ok. I know the cheesy 'dark edge' effect is too much in evidence in the small version of this next one. But when you enlarge it, it actually looks right. This was on the Desiard Street Bridge (pronounced da-ZEERD) in Monroe, Louisiana, looking at West Monroe, La., over the Ouachita River (pronounced WASH-i-taw). Jeesh with the Louisiana spellings vs pronunciations. You need an interpreter. I sure am glad I'm not from Natchitoches, La. (that one is pronounced NACK-a-tish)
I love derelict, tumble-down things. (I guess because I feel kinda derelict and tumble-down myself) And B&W photos present them best. This is part of an old train bridge over the Ouachita River. This is a crop from the original. All I had at the time was a 135mm tele, and the photo still needed to be closer. That's what I love about this whole scanning/Photoshop Elements thing. I can revisit old photos and play with them. Though I do miss the smell of stop bath.

---

I still can't believe I talked Lovely Fiance into going into that old shack in the first photo, so that her face would be in the window. Must have been love.

Have a great Sunday!