lørdag 17. februar 2018

A few thoughts from over here

From the westerly side of that rather big Atlantic Ocean I give you a few words as we finally hit the shores of Trinidad & Tobago a few days ago. We didn't literary hit the shore mind, as big ships are not allowed to do that. At least we are finally here, preparing ourselves for the next job coming up.
It's a rather warm climate over here in the caribbean area, but I guess you've heard about that already from somebody else but me.


The Ona lighthouse, my nearby neighbour out there on the island. I never get tired of looking at that thing, actually. Or so it seems, anyway.

Two more days at work for now, and then you'll have me on the plane to get home to shuffle some of all that recent fallen snow from one end of the garden over to the other. You know the deal, I guess... good thing I still got some power in these arms and legs as there always seems to be something that needs to be carried, lifted, shuffled, repaired and what have we.

One of my friends posted a question a couple of days ago about something like "how many of you out there have experienced a memory card breakdown and lost pictures because of it" sort of thing. I threw in my reply, without having to even mention the word "film" once throughout my "article" this morning, and the comment section of that particular post has been totally dead ever since. It's painful, I know, to have someone telling you that loosing a couple of hundred or thousand snaps from a broken memory card is actually the smallest of problem you're facing being a dedicated pixel collector. None of your pictures will exist to see the light of day as your grand-grand children grows up given the world continuing on the same path as today anyway. At least not unless all your descendants will be growing up being super humans of some sort. One lazy, or unlucky for that sake bloke somewhere down the line is enough, and it will all be lost for all eternity. It's going to be a lot of work and hassle to take care of all them hard drives in the years to come, believe me! 
Me...? Oh, I just file them negs inside ring binders and more or less forget them. They will be there for anyone being able to shine a light through them to make real pictures at some point, should they feel like. Unless the house burns down, of course. Or some other disaster strikes... But them hard drives, no way they will survive anything. Not even themselves and/or their own language, as in not too many years from now there will be no machine still in production able to read them things anyway.


The Watch Crow of Glasgow (or wherever...)

Nuff said for today, I guess. I'm off for a short stroll on deck in at least 25 deg. heat or something like that, before throwing myself into bed. It takes time to get used to walking outside in the dark realizing the temperature is still higher than on the brightest summer mid-day back home.
Really looking forward to go home and pick up my wee project again. There will be a few days of work coming up when I get there, but I'll try to keep you sort of informed as I'm moving along. At least there's some sort of plan starting to manifest itself... which is good, I hope.

4 kommentarer:

  1. A fair point you make about digital photos disappearing because of obsolescence, card failure, etc. I keep flip-flopping between film and digital because I like the look of film but digital is very convenient. At the moment I'm on the flop and took my digital camera to an historical school the other day. I don't worry too much about losing thousands of photos to card failure because I shoot like I'm still using film and only come home with seventy-odd photos usually. Two 'rolls', as it were. I hate editing large numbers of photos and hate even more fiddling with exposure and so on in the computer. I make sure everything is done correctly in camera, or I use a Lightroom preset that I can apply with one click if I want a special look. Then I spend my time doing better things. Losing photos (and documents) because of the march of technology is a real problem. That's why I print all the photos remaining after the editing process (I do this for film as well) and keep them in no-acid sleeves in binders. I print important documents because all hard drives eventually fail and sometimes things get overlooked when backing up or transferring data. Diligence and precaution can save a digital photographer's work, but most people don't bother and don't bother and then have a good cry when they lose everything to a hard drive failure or drop their phone into the toilet.
    I'm looking forward to seeing more photos when you get home.

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. Thanks for your comment, Marcus :)
      Sure, digital is very convenient indeed. I got no problem at all seeing that point. I'm just afraid most people today will never care about their digital snaps as I was learned to take care of every roll and frame I ever finished back in the days.
      But the editing bits of things... a true nightmare seen from my side anyway.
      Just home, so hopefully will have a thing or two to show in a few days time :))

      Slett
  2. A big topic, my friend - that old one. Or new one, since back in the day no-one seemed to talk too much about 'archival quality' or 'backups' and what have you. It's a bonus if some-one...anyone!...even takes the time to look at one of my snaps. Like Marcus does, I print the snaps I like and hope the negatives will be around for a while. I do get immense pleasure from looking back at old negatives, both ones I took back in the 70s but also family treasures going back to the 30s. Those I do worry about surviving and hope they do for another 80-odd years! Barring a house fire, as you say, they should be fine. As for those digital boys&girls, I have no idea how anyone is going to take the time to sift through those tens of thousands of images to find the 'good ones'. My negative files are big enough! Printing is a way of sorting out the best ones, I guess.

    On another note, I'd settle for a day or three of 25 degrees right now! It feels like it's been a long winter here in Ireland - and we're not out of it yet...

    SvarSlett
    Svar
    1. Thank you Michael, for your thoughts and comments.
      I'm just back home and went through my first small batch of Lith developer yesterday. Nothing great came out of it of course, but at least I found a couple of papers to go for... and a couple to stay well away from. At least in lith world.
      So as usual I have done nothing much apart from wasting some good old paper. Oh... and the light bulb inside my Durst just went south a couple of hours ago, so now I'm at this old computer thing to hopefully order a couple of new ones. They are probably here on Tuesday, I hope! Until then I might find the time to develop some film. Looks like I got a small bunch of them in need for some good old wash at the moment.
      We will see, I guess :)

      Slett

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