I had a dental checkup at nine forty this morning, and decided to go by car. As it was Clare's day in school, I was able to give her a lift to Llandaff North. Despite my apprehensions, the outgoing traffic was light and I was there by nine thirty, and had been seen by my appointment time. This gave me time to shop at the big new Lidl store, then drive home, and walk to St John's in time for the Mass at ten thirty. That's what I call a good start to the day.
In the afternoon, I hunted through several hard drives on which I store old data and photos, looking for the pictures I took on my study trip to Jamaica early in 1982, I digitised in 2009, not long after buying the slide scanner I still use from time to time. Once retrieved, I uploaded all 313 of them to Google Photos, and went through them, realising that contemporary web photo editing tools are a lot more capable and user friendly than the original Picasa desktop tools I used after scanning photos to my computer.
All the Ektachrome film scans I made looked too dark and over saturated. How to modify them at the time was rather hit or miss, not merely due to limitations of the tools and my experience of using them, but because now I see and remember from a different perspective, having spent so much time in Andalusia, where high contrast, rich saturated colors make the place so attractive, (not to mention the music). It was good to be able to render the photos a little closer to the way they looked in reality. They weren't scanned in the order they were taken, so now I have the task of reconstructing from memory date, time and location, titling and filing them by category, so they are not randomly presented for viewing - very much a labour of love and remembrance.
The quality of these old images is by no means as excellent as stuff I can take with any of my regular cameras bought over the past five years. You'd have to be a real craftsman with an old school film SLR to get results that good. Such intense light, high contrast photos are hard to take, for an amateur, even with a UV lens filter, which mine had then, as nowadays on my digital SLR equivalent. Cameras with Digital auto-settings have taken much of the burden from a mostly point and shoot camera user.On the Jamaica trip I used an excellent East German Praktica SLR camera, but it packed in half way through. Humidity caused the shutter to stick. Fortunately, I had a second camera - a mini Ricoh pocket camera, which shot half frame images on 35mm standard film.
Part of my Jamaica mission was to photograph the island and its schools. I decided to have all my films developed out there, to put money into the local economy, and discovered the Praktica was letting me down. Nightmare! It meant I had to retrace some of my trips and shoot some places again. It was fine, as I had a hire car, which I could afford, as I wasn't spending money on hotels, due to hospitality offered by families with parish links back in Bristol, and I found out in good time to make good the losses I identified.The little Ricoh camera delivered surprisingly good results, but sad to say, I undervalued it and can't even remember how I parted company with it. It was as simple in design as the Olympus Trip I took with me to Mongolia in 1999, but even smaller. If I'd kept it, I might still be using it occasionally with film for its remarkable results.
Now the photos are uploaded, they can be seen, albeit in fairly random order right here. Looking at them with different eyes nine years after digitizing them was quite revelatory. They awaken place memories and forgotten insights, as well as reminding me how I made use of them as an adult educational tool, after returning home.
Next, I must find and transcribe my handwritten accounts of that unique, life changing journey, made half a lifetime ago. It's time to let that see the light of day, and reflect on the differences between then and now.
In the afternoon, I hunted through several hard drives on which I store old data and photos, looking for the pictures I took on my study trip to Jamaica early in 1982, I digitised in 2009, not long after buying the slide scanner I still use from time to time. Once retrieved, I uploaded all 313 of them to Google Photos, and went through them, realising that contemporary web photo editing tools are a lot more capable and user friendly than the original Picasa desktop tools I used after scanning photos to my computer.
All the Ektachrome film scans I made looked too dark and over saturated. How to modify them at the time was rather hit or miss, not merely due to limitations of the tools and my experience of using them, but because now I see and remember from a different perspective, having spent so much time in Andalusia, where high contrast, rich saturated colors make the place so attractive, (not to mention the music). It was good to be able to render the photos a little closer to the way they looked in reality. They weren't scanned in the order they were taken, so now I have the task of reconstructing from memory date, time and location, titling and filing them by category, so they are not randomly presented for viewing - very much a labour of love and remembrance.
The quality of these old images is by no means as excellent as stuff I can take with any of my regular cameras bought over the past five years. You'd have to be a real craftsman with an old school film SLR to get results that good. Such intense light, high contrast photos are hard to take, for an amateur, even with a UV lens filter, which mine had then, as nowadays on my digital SLR equivalent. Cameras with Digital auto-settings have taken much of the burden from a mostly point and shoot camera user.On the Jamaica trip I used an excellent East German Praktica SLR camera, but it packed in half way through. Humidity caused the shutter to stick. Fortunately, I had a second camera - a mini Ricoh pocket camera, which shot half frame images on 35mm standard film.
Part of my Jamaica mission was to photograph the island and its schools. I decided to have all my films developed out there, to put money into the local economy, and discovered the Praktica was letting me down. Nightmare! It meant I had to retrace some of my trips and shoot some places again. It was fine, as I had a hire car, which I could afford, as I wasn't spending money on hotels, due to hospitality offered by families with parish links back in Bristol, and I found out in good time to make good the losses I identified.The little Ricoh camera delivered surprisingly good results, but sad to say, I undervalued it and can't even remember how I parted company with it. It was as simple in design as the Olympus Trip I took with me to Mongolia in 1999, but even smaller. If I'd kept it, I might still be using it occasionally with film for its remarkable results.
Now the photos are uploaded, they can be seen, albeit in fairly random order right here. Looking at them with different eyes nine years after digitizing them was quite revelatory. They awaken place memories and forgotten insights, as well as reminding me how I made use of them as an adult educational tool, after returning home.
Next, I must find and transcribe my handwritten accounts of that unique, life changing journey, made half a lifetime ago. It's time to let that see the light of day, and reflect on the differences between then and now.
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