I've been transcribing old color slides to digital images using my studio scanner. These are slides I took in 1964 when I was at summer camp in New Hampshire. I went to a girls' camp named Camp Idlepines, located in a remote and unspoiled part of New Hampshire. I was a camper there for three summers: 1963, 1964, and 1965. In my recollection, I was a whiny, complaining, spoiled "behavior problem" who vexed counselors and other campers alike. But I must have enjoyed some parts of my camping experience, and must have liked at least a few of the other girls there, because I took pictures of them. I don't remember most of their names, but I will find out soon. The people who ran the camp are still alive and are trying to contact as many of their former campers as they can, including me. The two sisters who led the camp asked specifically about me, perhaps curious to learn how the "behavior problem" turned out.

I unpacked the slides from their hiding place, where I had kept them for decades. The slides are 35 millimeter half-frame exposures. They were taken on a camera called the Olympus Pen, which my folks had given me a year or so earlier. This little camera lasted me until the late seventies, when it finally wore out. So I have boxes and boxes of tiny slides, including my Camp Idlepines pictures.

My scanner didn't like the half-frame film size. It is set to recognize full-frame 35mm slides or negatives, as they are set in a plastic grid on the scanning plate. So in order to get good scans of the 35mm films, I had to do them one by one, patiently adjusting the machine's scan "window" to cover each one. The slides were also very dusty, and even blowing air and a clean paintbrush didn't get all the dust off. Fortunately, dust specks and discoloration can now be removed through the technological marvel of Photoshop.

When I started scanning these pictures, I realized that the film had faded. This was to be expected, even if it were not exposed to light. The reds and the yellows in the color balance had faded, leaving an intense bluish cast to all the pictures. So not only did I have to work on editing out the dust specks, I had to restore the "natural" color to all these old films, using the built-in adjustments provided by Photoshop. I adjusted color balance, brightness and contrast, lightness and sharpness. I added color to some faded photos, using "transparent" overlays of digital tint. Some of the photos needed very special treatment to bring out any image at all. At the age of 11, I just wasn't that good a photographer, and some of the pictures were very underexposed. I could see, though, that these nearly black slides had a recognizable image buried in the darkness.

I devised a crude but effective way to retrieve the color images from my very underexposed dark slides. I mounted the slide in a black paper "mask" and held it up to a very bright light. Then when I had the image in view, I took my digital camera, set to "close range," and photographed the slide with the bright light (my studio table light) shining through it. Then I worked on the digital photo, bringing out as much detail and color as possible. They weren't ever going to be great photographs, but at least a face and a figure is clearly visible in these images, finally, after more than forty years.

The blue-ness remains, however. Some of this is true-to-life. I remember being enthralled by the intense, brilliant blue of the sky over this part of New Hampshire, far from polluting cities. Some of the images are just pictures of sky and leaves, and I remember taking them just to document how bright the greens and blue were. I loved the forest, and I remember spending as much time alone among the trees as possible. I took many pictures of dappled sunlight among dark green leaves, though some of these photographs are not easily recovered. The reflecting surface of the lake, where the camp had its waterfront, was often a brilliant blue as well. I hated swimming, but I loved boating, and I found pictures of the beautiful aluminum canoes I had learned to paddle.

Another series of photos I retrieved were of a day spent climbing Mount Chocorua, a 3500-foot peak in the White Mountains, noted for its rocky bald summit. Here we are climbing up the trail toward the top.

I clearly remember this hike, which I enjoyed, and I brought my Olympus Pen with me. It was a perfect day, and the blueness of the view from the top of the mountain has not faded at all.

Since I just spent a peaceful, outdoor weekend in another beautiful location, my mind is still out there with the trees and the birds. Maybe someday I'll see skies this blue again.

Posted at 1:36 am | link