Snow Day in the Darkroom

Let’s get this out in the open. I did not run today. And it wasn’t because of the snow. I didn’t run indoors or outdoors. Frankly my knee needs a break. I’ve iced it after my last two runs and I iced it last night even though I didn’t run yesterday. I’ll ice it again tonight for good measure. No doubt I’ll keep icing it for a while; it does feel somewhat better. I need it to be good, though, if I am to conquer the races I have coming up in the next few months.

Some of the snapshots are pretty artistic.

So I spent a portion of my day off sorting some more of those mystery vacation slides. I perused about a third of the collection and scanned 49 I found interesting for whatever reason. That brings me to 55 scans. OK, first, the perusing is laborious. It’s a strain hunching over a four-foot light table in the back of the old darkroom at The Register-Mail. Arranging rows of slides on the table and bending close with a magnifying loupe to details and sharpness to determine if a particular slide is worthy. Not that I’m some magazine photo editor, scrutinizing fine art for the best of the best for publication. I’m just looking for pictures that tell a little bit of a story, show a piece of everyday life during somebody’s vacations.

I learned a few things today. The slides span at least a dozen years. I’ve found dates from 1958 to 1970. Many are not dated and that’s disappointing. Those that bear a date show the month and year. Now, those of you familiar with slide processing will know that the imprint of the date is when the film was processed, so Oct 63 doesn’t necessarily mean the photos were made in October. They could be from months before, depending on how prompt this family was in having their vacation photos processed. But it gives us an idea.

Pinnacle Peak Patio in Scottsdale, Arizona. Famous for its cowboy steaks
and ranch chili. Today it's also a microbrewery. Very cool.

Second, I discovered that while many of the slides are from days spent at various resort cabins in Minnesota, the family also headed to the Southwest. My brief research (I know, I avowed this would not be a research project) leads me to surmise they were in the vicinity of Scottsdale, Arizona. That’s the home of the Pinnacle PeakPatio. Seams the steakhouse and microbrewery has been around in some form since 1957. Google Images Search helped me figure out one photo was of the big sundial in Carefree, Arizona. How cool is that?

Finally, let me say it is amazing how you can blend old school and new technology. I sorted slides on a light table, just like we used to do when selecting images from negatives. At first we made prints. Then, as we transitioned into electronic publishing, we scanned those negatives to save the images digitally and import them into Quark Xpress or Adobe InDesign pages. Today I was scanning 50-year-old slides and saving digital files to upload for my blog. Yeah, nothing new. Been doing it for a while. But spending two hours of my afternoon on a snowy, sloppy day, sorting, scanning, recording what information was available and even cleaning up a few of the speckled images was an experience. You should try it sometime.

Carefree, Arizona, sundial. Thank you, Google.

Today's Stats

Temp: 30s degrees F

Distance: 0 miles

Weekly Total: 0 miles

Treasure: Nada.

iPod Playlist (Shuffle):

A Little Bit More – Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show

Comfortable – John Mayer

Tryin’ To Get TheFeeling Again – Barry Manilow

Axel F – Harold Faltermeyer

Dear Prudence – The Beatles

Hide In Your Shell - Supertramp

Gold – John Stewart

Sympathy for the Devil – The Rolling Stones

Do What You Do – Jermaine Jackson

Hard Habit to Break - Chicago

Devil Woman – Cliff Richard

What Am I DoingHangin’ Round? – The Monkees

American Pie – Don McLean

Raising the Cross – John Debney (The Passion of the Christ soundtrack)

Hit Somebody (HockeySong) – Warren Zevon (Funny note: Paul Shaffer shouts the "hit somebody" tagline in this "Letterman" show clip; Letterman himself, a friend of Zevon's, shouts the line for the official recording.)

On the Dark Side – John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band

Must be a bizarre ghost image - otherwise that fellow's britches are ablaze!