Winter is the perfect time for doing something with a photo
collection- specifically those photos that are real- as in NOT Digital.
I'm sure even the most technologically avid photographer prints out his
favorites. But what I'm really talking about are collections of photos
from a part of someone's life that form a kind of separate entity when
it comes to showing it as a collection. In my case that would be a year
in the Columbia Icefelds, 7 years as a traveling salesperson on West Coast Amusements, 3 years in
Chome-Long Xiangjiang Safari Park....they are very distinct from one another.
The
cost of scanning prints has come way down and in many cases can be done
at a local retailer by yourself or have the staff do it within minutes.
Scanning negatives is another story but I imagine the day may come where
even this becomes more user friendly.
I invested in a
film scanner a few years ago and when I have time and sufficient
motivation I work on scanning my families old negatives and slides.
While it's a relatively easy task, like all scanning work it is time
consuming. Scanning prints and slides is something I do as a service as
well and the inevitable result of scan will show all the imperfections
of the original media in shocking detail and clarity. That's where the
photo retouching skills come into play.
But sometime
scanning large archives is not feasible. My latest project of getting
online a collection of photos from the days (years actually) I worked on
the carnival circuit with West Coast Amusements and Wagner Shows had to be scaled down in some way as these
particular photos act as a reference to the actual image. I didn't count
but I think it's around 300 images I wanted to share. I decided the
simplest thing would be to photograph them directly in the album and if
anyone is interested in a print or digital file would do the actual
scanning at that point. The project has been interesting in terms of
response- a lot of the people I knew in those days are still around- and
a sad number have passed away. I got a lot of friend requests out it
about half of which I couldn't respond to because I don't remember all
those people- I was a SERIOUS shutterbug in those days who saw many
people come and go from year to year on the carny circuit- I was all
about capturing a face on film and didn't make many close friendships.
But life is settled now and I can give some time to showing who these people are- or were.
