What did you photograph this fortnight? (19/12-31/12)
The last couple of days have been filled with post-processing for me, not my own pictures, mind, but photographs taken in the early 1960s by the British Antartic Survey.
The father of a close friend of mine died last year and, tidying up his things, she recently stumbled across a boxful of damp and mouldy slides. They cleaned up really well with PEC-12 Film Emulsion Cleaner, and once they were each remounted in Gepe archival quality slide mounts, they looked as good as new, just about. There's still some damage to the slides, and the odd bit of dust which gets into the scan no matter how careful you are... But a bit of patience and a whole lot of Photoshop later, and they're looking very bright and fresh...
It's been odd, not just stepping into another time, but into another photographer's shoes, and thinking, every time I make an adjustment, whether I'm doing things he'd approve of. I'm not even thinking big things, either, but small ones, like re-pointing the histogram during the scan to maximise dyamic range (did he want detail in the subject, or is it supposed to be dark?), or cropping an image to 6*4, when it's actually bigger than those ratios (should I trim off left or right?)
Anyway, there are 120 slides. I've spent thirty hours, so far, cleaning, remounting and scanning. And I've post-processed twenty. My aim's to get them done in time for Christmas...
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