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Tag Archives: memories
Hail to the kings of movie soundtracks
Last Saturday I closed a loop that had started 40 years ago: I saw the movie Footloose. You ought to know that the movie as well its soundtrack were huge hits in 1984; the catchy title song, in particular, was all over the radio and TV. It was almost as big as Flashdance from the year before. Kenny may have been dubbed the “King of Movie Soundtracks” in the eighties but it was ultimately Giorgio Moroder and Harold Faltermeyer who were pulling the strings. Continue reading
Posted in Cassette, Movies, Music
Tagged 1984, 1986, achievement unlocked, blockbuster, memories, movies, music, personal, soundtrack, tapes, wasted youth
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The quality of slide scans
Photo slides had completely disappeared off my radar until early 2008 when my father brought them over — along with a slide scanner he couldn’t figure out how to operate. I knew that someday I would revisit them with my trusty old Epson Perfection 3490 Photo flatbed scanner. What follows are my thoughts and experiences on the matter. Brace for impact! Continue reading
Posted in Photography
Tagged advice, archival, digitization, digitizing old photos, experiences, history, memories, personal, projects, scanning, time
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Photo restoration through AI? Nope!
Despite the recent incredible developments in artificial intelligence and image generation, I remain steadfast that AI still has no role in the workflow for digitising personal snapshots on prints, slides or negatives. While I obviously made basic edits like cropping, or adjusting brightness, contrast, white balance and colours so that the viewer can actually see what’s going on in a photo, my experiences with AI services (read: face enhancing) have done nothing but confirm a phenomenon that’s already been termed “identity shift”. Continue reading
Posted in Photography
Tagged AI, AI photo enhancement, archival, art, digitization, facial recognition, man-machine, memories, restoration, surveillance
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Current status: Still sorting photos
It’s March 2023, and it’s been about one year since I started digitising my photo collection. What I hadn’t counted on was the amount of time that researching, naming, and sorting of the resultant scans would ultimately take. Continue reading
Posted in Photography
Tagged digitization, history, images, memories, personal, photos, puppies, time
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Photography: What’s the point?
The photo fails as a historic document. It has no journalistic value or artistic merit. It is neither aesthetic nor is there an underlying message. While there is no doubt that it meant something to whoever pressed the shutter at that moment, this information is now, some forty years later, lost. Continue reading
Posted in Photography
Tagged digitization, history, images, memories, nostalgia, personal, philosophy, purpose of meaning
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Mixed emotions: Papa was a rolling stone
Anyone looking through old photographs knows to expect to see pictures of those who are no longer with us. This is normal. Not so in my case: A few weeks ago I was sorting through old photos of my father while, simultaneously and elsewhere, he lay dying a bitter and lonely man. Life is cruel. Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged family, memories, mortality, murder-death-kill, obituary, personal, vatertag
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The obsolescence of family photo albums
Ah, the family photo albums! Those archivists of activities, those precious nuggets of nostalgia, those reminders of bad haircuts and even worse fashion sense that were cause for much delight when the parents had visitors over and they all gushed over pictures of babies of strangers whom they’ve never met and places nobody barely remembers. Family photos cover the spectrum from braggery from the curator’s perspective to voyeurism on the viewer’s part. Continue reading
Posted in Photography
Tagged digitization, images, memories, mortality, nostalgia, people, personal
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Best-of-the-year radio charts
Like most teenagers of the eighties, I grew up with one ear permanently stuck to the radio. It became customary for Radio 5 and Radio 702 to count down the greatest singles of the year, and I did my darndest to wake up early and write it all down! Continue reading
Posted in Music
Tagged DJ, memories, radio, retro, South Africa, teenage years, wasted youth
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