Frozen moments

A few months ago, my mom purchased a nifty new device. This device can scan negatives and slides, digitizing them and transforming them into color photos. It seemed like a magical box of wonder when I heard the description, and it is - sort of. The quality of the output depends a whole lot on the quality of the negatives, and there's no way to adjust anything before scanning - any editing of exposure and color adjustment needs to be done after the file has been digitized. It's actually quite time consuming to get a decent finished product from an old negative.

But. There's nothing quite like scanning some mystery negatives from the bottom of an old shoebox and seeing a scene from the past pop up on your screen. Even if the quality is kind of sucky, what gets me in these old photos are the background details. I am fascinated by background details. They're things that are most likely to have been forgotten, or never consciously noticed at all. Certain ornaments on a Christmas tree. How the furniture was arranged. The dishes and appliances on the counters in the kitchen. Beyond just digitizing old negatives and photos, scanning them into the computer in high resolution allows them to be viewed much larger than the typical 3x5 snapshots that populate our old photo albums, revealing a whole new dimension of background detail. I could get lost in these photos. Here are a few from old holiday negatives:

My mom helping my oldest sister decorate the Christmas tree in 1969. Oh my God, my mom was four years younger than I am now in that picture.


With toys. I love the stuff in the back of this picture. It was taken at my parents' first apartment, but I remember that hideous puke-looking rug, so they must have brought it with them. I also remember that stereo, which may still be down the Basement o' Wonders. Classy floral arrangement, too.


A year or so later. I wish the colors were better, because that dress is adorable. Hey, how much do you think the TV weighed?

The other thing this device can do, as I mentioned above, is scan slides. This might not be as useful to most people as the scanning of negatives, but most people didn't have my maternal grandfather taking photos when they were growing up. Grandpa, as I have noted in the past, loved both photography and technology. This combination of traits was perhaps less common back then than it is today, with new tech gadgets in constant demand. Grandpa had a camera that took 3D photos. These photos had to be sent off to another city to be developed, where they were put on ViewMaster-style slides and shipped back. To look at them, you needed another special device - pretty much a really expensive ViewMaster. Except instead of showing Return of the Jedi or Thriller slides, like my red plastic one did, it showed the photos you had just taken in startling, lifelike 3D detail. It took me a long time to realize that everyone's family didn't have these. Grandpa also typed the exact date on every slide, bless him. That's so something I would be crazy enough to do.

With the new device, for the first time, I'm able to digitize these photos. As amazing as it is to have them as 3D slides, it's also somewhat restrictive. You need the ViewMasters in order to look at them in any meaningful way, and can't easily share them with others. Scanning them robs the slides of their three-dimensionality, of course, but the quality of the resulting files - at least, some of them - is breathtaking. They haven't degraded the way old negatives and photographs have. The slides have some exposure issues, which unfortunately I'm not sure how to fix on the scanning end of things. But when the composition of a shot is just right for scanning, wow. Some examples follow. Thanks, Grandpa.

My sister on Nana and Grandpa's porch, 1974. The colors in this shot may have turned out the best of any of the scanned slides.


My sisters on a car, ca. 1975. Love the outfits.


Me on Nana's couch with a racket, 1983.


In the corner of Nana's kitchen. Look at the wallpaper long enough and you'll go insane!