It's hard to complain when it looks like this....

I work in a basement office area, so when I leave for lunch is is generally my first look at the outside world in several hours. The heavy wet snow I saw then continued the rest of the day and alternated with sleet and freezing rain and finally turned to all snow overnight. Columbia Public Schools freaked out and decided to cancel, even though they are now running a deficit of snow days.

This is what things looked like from our deck:

Kodak winds last rolls of Kodachrome | Crave - CNET

Kodak winds last rolls of Kodachrome | Crave - CNET:

"First we said good-bye to Polaroid, now it's Kodachrome. What's a film sentimentalist to do? After 74 years of making the color film used by many of photography's greats, Kodak announced Monday that it's ending Kodachrome's production.

Kodachrome makes up less than 1 percent of Kodak's total sales for still film, according to the company. Digital cameras are obviously the main culprit contributing to Kodachrome's demise, but photographers are also using newer kinds of color film that are easier to process. Only one photofinishing lab in the world still processes Kodachrome--Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kan. ..."

This is, of course, not unexpected since most other roll films for amateur photographers have been phased out. It seems a shame, nevertheless, to see Kodachrome disappear.

One of my favorite stories is that of William Henry Jackson (1843-1942) whose iconic photographs of the Yellowstone area in Wyoming were instrumental in its designation as Yellowstone National Park. For these photographs he lugged heavy equipment to make wet plates for exposure in large cameras. In the last several years of his life, he dabbled in a new film called Kodachrome.

On a personal note Kodachrome was the first 35mm color film I used, after having begun with 120 roll film in black and white. I still have many of those slides from the 1960s. My last camera system was a Nikon 8008 and when I made the switch to digital over between 2001 and 2005 I chose a Nikon D-70 SLR, since it would take all my older lenses. I still kept a Nikkormat and a Yashica 120 camera for those times when I wanted a little more nostalgia as I took photos. And besides, both would work with or without batteries.

Now I have two 35mm and 120 film cameras, an Omega B-22 enlarger and associated darkroom equipment -- all rapidly becoming relics of another era. Sounds like I'm getting to officially be an old codger.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park -- ca. 1970

Here are some additional scans of B&W negatives. All these were taken with a 35mm Argus C3 camera using Kodak infrared B&W film, ASA 10. Infrared film, in addition to requiring heavy filtration to keep out most of the visible light (I used a red filter here), is notoriously grainy.

Looking upstream in a deciduous forest.
Note the white-looking foliage and ghostly appearance.

An old rail fence and pasture in Cades Cove

An old cabin and outbuilding in Cades Cove

I'm not sure where this photo was taken,
but it is likely near Clingman's Dome

Scanning old photos

Photograph of my brother and a turtle taken with
Kodak Verichrome Pan film (size 120, ASA 125). Circa 1965.

I have, in boxes, albums, and notebooks, thousands of photographs, B&W negatives, color slides, and color negatives that I have taken over the years since about 1964 -- not to mention many old photos that have come down from both sides of our family. I have been at my wits end trying to decide how to deal with them, and most of the solutions I looked at had a hefty price tag.

One solution I had not considered was a scanner. The last time I used one, it was a 300 dpi model that did a fair job of scanning photographs, but a poor job of scanning slides. Negatives were not even feasible, especially color negatives with the orange mask.

A few weeks ago we found an Epson 4490 for under $200 that handled all the types of photographic media I had. Its resolution is 4800 x 9600 dpi, and it does the job slowly, but well. I still need to experiment to determine the best resolution to employ, but the ones I have already done are more than satisfactory, if a bit large.

Scanners are generally quite unforgiving of dust, scratches, and such on negatives, but with the magic of Photoshop, I can fix them nicely.

Wired News: Adobe Tackles Photo Forgeries

Wired News: Adobe Tackles Photo Forgeries:

"A suite of photo-authentication tools under development by Adobe Systems could make it possible to match a digital photo to the camera that shot it, and to detect some improper manipulation of images, Wired News has learned.

Adobe plans to start rolling out the technology in a number of photo-authentication plug-ins for its Photoshop product beginning as early as 2008. The company is working with a leading digital forgery specialist at Dartmouth College, who met with the Associated Press last month. ..."

This should have a clear effect on the use of images, which are powerful adjuncts to news stories (and propaganda). Photoshop has been a highly useful tool in dealing with digital photos, but it can be turned to dishonest ends just as easily.

This work is based on the research of Dr Hany Farid who has written a short (5 page) explanation of how forgeries can be detected, using as examples several recent manipulated images, including one particularly blatant one from Lebanon that was reported first on a blog, and then by the Washington Post.