POTD: Spent Beauty #47

Spent Beauty #47
Wichita, Kansas
1974

I just finished going through all my old slides from back before I switched to digital photography. (That’s all of them unless I find another stash somewhere.) I tossed a whole lot of them and scanned the rest. After the cull, there were about 1200 that I scanned. At about 3 minutes a slide, that’s about 60 hours of scanner time. I spent about that same amount of time I imagine sorting them, labeling them etc.

The bulk of the photos are just records of the past–people I’ve know, places I’ve been. But a number of them are also results of my early attempts at using photography for artistic expression. I was not new to this effort when I was shooting slides as I had been working with black and white film for probably six years or so before I switched to color slides. Anyway it’s a fun exercise to look at those early attempts at art photography and compare them to what I do now. There have certainly been some obvious changes in my photographic style and skill over the years (as evidenced by the number of “artsy” photos from back then that I simply threw out), but there is a small set of them I’m still quite happy with. This is one of them, taken on a winter day in a park in Wichita.

2 thoughts on “POTD: Spent Beauty #47”

  1. I agree – nice image. I think you’ve probably always had the eye for the artistic shots.
    I have begun the process of going through old photos, too. Don’t have many slides (except from my childhood which I’ve already scanned) but a lot of prints that I’ve gone through and culled – don’t need 5 photos of the kids opening the same Christmas gift. 😉 The plan is to eventually scan the prints. Can’t say I have many “artsy” photos – at least not worth saving. Anyway, I understand a bit of what you’ve been doing. It is a long process but if you have the time it’s kind of fun.

    1. Thanks Judy. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all these slides (and negatives) once I’ve got them scanned, but as you said it’s kind of fun –at least when the photos aren’t reminding me of how old I am!

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