Photo Tools

I have note books full of negatives and transparencies in all formats: 35mm and 6×6 in black and white and transparencies, 4x5s, 8x10s. Some are tests when I was trying to build a portfolio and outtakes from jobs. It is all more or less forgettable or embarrassing. But there are many pictures of people and places that ignite memories of lost times and people. The emotions and feelings that have not been visited in a long time can come roaring back. Memory is weird. Sometimes the memory of a place or person is replaced in the mind by a photograph of that place or person. This is especially true when that person is gone. This place is village in the Alpes Maritime above Antibes and Juan les Pines. My dad lived there in the fall as a refuge from Norway and family drama to write and have the friends he loved visit him. The two things he loved to do was to walk around the port and see the boats and talk to the wharf rats and fisherman and to drive deep into the country-side and get lost on obscure roads. The day this was taken, in late fall, we drove up to one his favorite villages. There was one restaurant, which was closed when we got there. He explained that most people there work for the government maintaning the road that gets one there. I have very little memory of the town itself, but this photograph is what is burned in my memory and reminds me of the time we spent together as the cancer that was slowly eating away his back the rest of him marched on. This was not the last time we saw each other, but it was the last year that he was able to get around as he wanted. This image was a 6×6 transparency that I scanned on a flatbed scanner that is probably 20 years old. The blue channel was messed up, but I got something useable out of it. Making it sharp was hard, but after three or four tries I it got to be at least reasonably sharp. More on scanning to come.