It is almost incomprehensible how much digital photography and electronic media have changed picture taking for even the most experienced photographers! I had been taking pictures for years and lived in Rochester, New York, the main headquarters of “Kodak”, the patriarch of the industry. Kodak regularly had seminars to help nonprofessionals improve not only their skills at organization, exposure, etc. but also their ability to convey ideas and emotional toning in presentations.
For the uninitiated, there were many types of film with different qualitative strengths, and choosing the type best suited to one’s needs was very important. Fortunately, I had friends in high places at Kodak to help me make such decisions. They recommended that since I might want to compare paintings from child to child or country to country, all of my film should come from the same processing run, and as I would be away for such a long time, the film should come from the latest run available to avoid its becoming “out dated”.
Kodak processed all its own film. When you bought a roll of film, you also received a return “mailer” with a removable tab for verification. After processing, slides were returned to the return address noted on the mailer. Normally this posed no problems, but for me it was a huge one! I would be gone for months and out of touch. There was no way I could check my photos! I just had to trust to luck. I also realized that even if I took only ten pictures each day for the 15 months, I would have about 4500 unidentified slides when got home! Unlike today’s photos, a photo carried no date or GPS notation to clue one in about where or when it had been taken! The removable tab on the mailer was my savior! Each time I sent off a roll of film, I recorded the time and place I had taken the pictures and the camera I had used on the tab! When I arrived home, there was only one picture that I could not immediately identify! Then I remembered! One day, I was in a place that seemed to have nothing to classify it as being in any specific place in the world and I had taken a picture. The photo I could not identify was that picture! It could have been taken anywhere!
35mm film is perishable and fades with time - especially under conditions of improper light, heat and moisture. Since my pictures were such an integral part of my research and notes, verifying the venues where I worked and the reaction of the children and villagers, it was imperative that they be preserved as effectively as possible. Each slide was labeled, numbered and dated, then remounted in sterile glass, placed in cassettes that fit into the cartridges that went into my projector, and stored in a dark, air conditioned closet.
Fast forward to 2011! The pictures, despite their age, are in remarkably good condition, but in today’s electronic world are useless without being digitized. This has proved to be an almost insurmountable task! I located a company with a great website on the internet, Discount Digital Art, that agreed to test scan ten of my slides. After they were returned, with information re cost of doing future slides, I called the owner, who said he would have to “bring the photos up on his computer” and would call me back. He did not. Nor did he return a second phone call or e-mails. He obviously did not want my business.I returned to the internet and contacted other businesses. Some w(c)ould not process slides in glass mounts. Others could not assure me that the slides would be processed in the US., (I did not want to risk the possibility of loss.) Still others did not return my phone calls at all!. I was distraught! At last, after at least two more months of struggle, I found “Fred” at “Affordable Scanning” in Wisconsin, who not only listened to my problem and treated me with respect, but offered to test scan do ten slides “pro bono”. The scans were returned in good time, and the quality was of the digitized pictures was excellent. “Affordable” will have my business from now on! And I can proceed with my research!
Why did I wait so long to begin to work on my research? That’s a great question and the response is worthy of a later blog!
No comments:
Post a Comment