I have a packet of negatives bought at the flea market. I've never scanned any of them. I thought that every so often I'd just pull one out and scan it. We get what we get. There are I believe 29 negs in the little packet with "misc. negatives" written on the front.
The first one reminds me of one Jim Linderman at Dull Tool Dim Bulb posted the other day of a model plane coming in for a landing on a bed with a white bedspread. It was wonderfully odd, no doubt about it. This one is not quite so odd...I think...maybe. A sled made to look like a plane. Homemade or store bought? You decide.
Click on image to see it larger.
I'm trying to imagine some kid in this thing rattling down a hillside while the mother, wearing an apron, stands at the kitchen window with furrowed brow, fingers nervously twitching at her mouth, wondering if junior is going to survive. Don't worry mother. I've seen worse. My cousins used to sit at the top of a very steep hill on Tonka trucks and go bat-you-know-what crazy until they ran into a bush. They all strangely survived.
Of course, the geography of this landscape has me wondering if these people had a hill. Did a kid just get in it and have someone pull them while they pretended to fire the dual guns? And how did they steer this thing? Too many questions. No answers.
Hmmmm...perhaps a German spy looming in the foreground taking photos of this US top secret fighter jet? Nah. Most likely the guy that built the thing.
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I need to invest in a negative scanner. When my grandfather passed away, I got a whole box of negatives just waiting to be printed.
ReplyDeleteWillow, you might just want to get a good flatbed capable of doing slides/negs. I have an Epson Perfecton V700 that works very nicely and very easy.
ReplyDeleteWhat a find!
ReplyDeleteIt appears to be assembled from molded parts so perhaps it is factory made.
It is impractical as there seems no way to propel it or steer it. It is high centered and might tip very easily, although it appears very sturdy.
The funny part is the tiny tail wheel that would be totally useless.
I worked in a camera shop as a teen. One episode there tempered forever how I think about photographs. A customer picked up her photo order, rifled through the prints and instructed me to throw away the negatives. I asked why she didn’t want to preserve the negatives and she answered, quite haughtily, “What do I want those for? I have the prints!”
Now when I struggle to recover a lovely old print, wrinkled, torn and faded with time, I think of her.
Unfortunately, that was the fate of a great many of our early negatives. So when I come across an envelope of negatives now, I consider it a special find. These will be photographic treasures perhaps unseen in decades. That print where Auntie Hannah had her eyes closed, got destroyed early-on. But the negative is still there.
By all means get a scanner capable of handling negatives. I have a Microtek i800. Works fine.
AnyJazz,
ReplyDeleteI remember seeing photos in trash bins at photo shops. People would go through their purchase and toss out what they didn't want. Probably some of the best stuff got tossed. If I'd only had the sense back then to ask if I could have them.
I showed my father the sled plane and the more he looked at it the more he began to believe that it was homemade and indeed had a crude steering mechanism. He pointed to the front struts and how they attached to the rails. There are some wires underneath and possible pedals. So perhaps there was rudimentary steering. Wouldn't get me in flying down a hill. But I bet when it got going and hit a snow bump and got airborne it was the talk of the neighborhood!
Indeed! Thanks so much for the plug!
ReplyDeleteMy photograph, which I did not mention, was a model my father made as a child, I found the photograph going through his papers. Jim
Dull Tool Dim Bulb
Jim, I'm hoping the plane still exists, but imagine it has long since met its fate. It is a wonderful shot.
ReplyDelete