“One of the best ways to make yourself happy in the present is to recall happy times from the past. Photos are a great memory prompt…” — Gretchen Rubin
Salvaging Old Slides
This was the slide my son attached in his email to me today. It’s from a rafting trip I took down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon in 1991. A friend took the photo with my camera. Looking at it makes me happy.
I used to take color slides with my great, old Canon camera because they were cheaper than having prints made. Yes, that was a long time ago, well before the days of my great, point and shoot digital Canon that I use today. No, I don’t take pictures with my phone.
These days I paint as much as I shoot photographs, and this is my latest piece. I call it bird watching. — Painting by Pat Bean
Over time, the slides and an antique slide projector that I used to view them, got packed in a box and stored away. I kept telling myself I was going to go through the slides one day and figure out which were worth saving in an easier-to-view form. The idea stayed in my head for years until I finally figured out that it wasn’t a task I wanted to do, and accepted that I would never get around to doing it.
I asked my oldest son, D.C., if he was interested. He was. So, I packed the whole shebang up and took it to him when I visited Texas in July.
Earlier today I got an email from him with one of the photos attached, and a note letting me know he had just finished scanning the last of about 1,000 slides. He told me he had bought a special slide scanner for the task.
Along with all the nature shots I had taken were a lot of family photos, including graduations, weddings and vacation photos, my son said. He’s now going to put them on USB memory sticks and will share them.
I think looking at them is going to make me very happy.
Bean Pat: Breezes at Dawn https://breezesatdawn.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/a-monday-meander-elemental/ This blog is another photo treat, especially for nature lovers.
Pat Bean is a Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder. Her book, Travels with Maggie, is now up on Amazon at http://tinyurl.com/y8z7553y Currently, she is writing a book, tentatively titled Bird Droppings, which is about her late-bloomer birding adventures. You can contact her at patbean@msn.com
Pat Bean's blog 
I had planned to do that – scan them and archive them digitally – with my slides, too, but then discovered that there was mold in between the glass and the film, and that I couldn’t remove that without scratching the film. So I had to throw all of them out.
You sliding down the waterfall reminds me of a waterfall I mentioned in my blog today, The “Sliding Rock Falls” in the Pisgah National Forest in NC. We didn’t turn off the road to look at those, though, having just seen another beautiful one before.
How fun – that photo looks like pure fun!
That is such a happy photo. I love photos too.
We’ve been doing something similar with old slides and home movies. It looks as though everything will end up digitized eventually. It makes me wonder how long that format will hold up, before we move on to something else.
I love that photo. You look like you’re having so much fun.
Thank you for the mention and the Bean Pat. 🙂
Sliding down a waterfall is not something I think I would do, but you look like you were having a great day. That made me smile. So happy you will be able to salvage more family memories from the dusty box of slides. 😊