Getting the measure of one's family by going through dozens of shoeboxes full of slides (mounted transparencies for you pros) is about as daunting as measuring the length of California's coast by counting the grains of beach sand at the water's edge. But like a guy in his baggy-ass Bermuda shorts combing the beach with a metal detector, I occasionally come across a gem or two. So I continue.
Don't get me wrong. Kodachrome is a great film.
"They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah"
But it made it too easy for my dad and myself to store thousands of useless family photographs. Useless, because they were only looked at once or twice in a darkened room and rarely were they marked as to why they exist in the first place. Those boxes full of memories are kind of like your phone's photo library, but not as well organized and a lot heavier.
Taken in 1972, shortly after graduating from high school. Not a great shot, but I was attracted to the evening colors.
I remember projecting some of my early shots in front of my parent's friends. I knew I was doing something right when one of them would ask, "what kind of camera are you using?" While I accepted the compliment, it’s the kind of question most photographers hate. Why? Let me put it another way. Would you wander into the the kitchen of a fancy French restaurant to ask the chef what brand pots were used to make your sublime Soupe à l'oignon? I think not, I hope. But if you must know, it was my dad’s Mamiya Sekor. Too much information?
I know why I used Kodachrome slide film. The quality was excellent, the reproduction was true-to-life, and it was relatively cheaper than having prints made, though I am paying for it now. For my dad, reasonably priced was his priority, which is sad, because he had a "good eye," as they say. Some of his slides are on film that stopped being manufactured back in the '70s, long before Kodak bit the dust. Ever hear of Pavelle Color? I had to look it up. Its first reference via Google was The National Museum of American History. It was a New York City-based film processing company that eventually was bought by Technicolor and finally put out of its misery.
My dad also bought his film from Costco's forerunner, Fedco, a warehouse/membership store founded by postal workers (no, it wasn't full of angry people). It had a store in Pasadena. The film was iffy, and most of it has been changing colors over the years. I've also come across Sears-brand film. Sadly, it's not Craftsman quality.
So, I sit at my desk with a Loupe or magnifying glass for a few hours almost every day, sorting slides over a small light table I purchased 30 years ago. For every box of 36 slides I study, I throw more than half of them away without running them through my film scanner. Of the others, I run them through my scanner in preview mode to see if they are worth further work.
What am I throwing out? Pictures of the sky, car doors, the ground, as well as fuzzy shots of blossoms, birds, cars, and scenery. The images that get a closer look have people, pets, or places I recognize in the frame. If not, it goes into the bin.
What could happen? Would it be that Aunt Nina's best hair-do gets overlooked because the photographer was stung by a bee when the shutter was released?
And what about the discards? Will I miss them? Did I accidentally throw out the only known photo of JFK eating a jelly donut? Possibly. Ich bin ein photo editor.
But one person’s discards could be another’s treasure. So, I prefer to believe that in a thousand years, some guy in Bermuda shorts toting a debris detector will scan a beach along the Fresno Sea and find a perfectly preserved Kodachrome image of a Buick Century's rearview mirror. He'll smile. He’ll pick it up. He’ll blow the sand from the emulsion before holding it up to the sky to get a better look, and say to himself, "Eureka! I’m adding this beaut to my collection!"