Rescuing beautiful photos taken around the world by an unknown photographer
Posted by Casey Holder on 14th Oct 2016
From time to time, large archives of analog images will find their way into our hands. Sometimes people are selling camera gear and just give us a big box of negatives. Other times, customers will come in and drop them off because they don't know what to do with them, but can't bring themselves to throw them away.
Recently, a box of hundreds of beautiful 35mm positive color slides came into the store. From the best we can tell, a man in the US Air Force captured these images between 1961 and 1967, and they span the globe, from Vietnam to Taiwan and Sydney to back here in the states. The images offer a unique perspective into a bygone era of American life and exotic places through the eyes of a touring service man.
The man doing the rescuing is Precision's senior repair technician, Dave. Dave began working in the store 34 years ago. As a graduate student at the University of Texas in the 1980s exploring his hobby as a photographer, Dave found his way into the original Precision Camera location on Guadalupe near the UT campus. With a background in astronomy and an understanding of optics, Dave was hired and, well, the rest is history.
Dave, a photo nerd through and through, began scanning his own massive troves of degrading color negatives to archive them for the future and has gathered all the necessary equipment. As a big fan of The Rescued Film Project and PIXPAST, projects that look to recover and archive lost collections of historical analog images, he just could not let these images die.
"There is some good stuff in here," he said. "It needs to be saved."
The process takes from 3 to 5 minutes per slide, Dave said. First he cleans the slides, which were stored in rough conditions. The box with the slides included some leaves and looks like it was stored in the heat. Next, he scans them and color corrects them.
From what Dave can tell, the slides are three different kinds of film. Images shot on Kodachrome held up the best. The remaining images were on Ektachrome and Anscochrome and degraded more.
Most color negatives and slides will degrade over time. Dave suggested following in his footsteps and creating digital scans of your images. That is something our professional lab here at Precision Camera can take care of. Learn more.
Meanwhile here are some more of our favorites:
