I'm on vacation now, but its a working vacation. I've brought along a laptop and external monitor, and a hard drive with all the currently scanned negatives. Now I'm going through them to pick out what makes it to the show and what doesn't.

Part of editing the photos is cleaning them up. I don't think my negatives were always this bad. In some cases, I can see where there wasn't enough fixer, or it was too weak, and there a line of dark along the top of all the negatives.

Some negatives seem to have growths on them. This detail shows a root like structure growing on the negative.

Most often, there's only a bit of dust and a few scratches that need spotting. Here's a before and after detail. There's a few dust spots on the cat and a long scratch on the dark board at bottom left.

Here's after, with the spots fixed in Photoshop.

If the image is for the web at 72 dpi, then it doesn't take long to fix. Most of the small flaws are lost when the image size is reduced. However, when I plan to print the image, which I do at 2880 dpi, I need to magnify the image and clean up the smallest of spots, or they will show.

In 1974 I was the editor of the school yearbook, but just down the hall from the yearbook office was the school bowling alley; A temping diversion. I liked bowling, but what I loved was pinball. When I got stuck on some element of the yearbook, I'd go play a game or two, or three or four or... I was good enough that I could play for an hour on a dollar or less, and often left a machine with multiple free games still on it.

Here I am playing a pinball machine at the school bowling alley.

One day I saw a flyer for a Pinball Tournament and signed up. Any bar or business with a pinball machine would hold a contest to find their best 2 players and send them to a state playoff. The winner would go on to play against other Midwest state's pinball players in Omaha, Nebraska later that summer. Needless to say I won the local tournament. The other local winners and I went to the state tournament in St. Joseph, MO.

There were 10 pinball machines lined up. You played one game on each and then the total of your scores was your final score. (There were several extra machines in case one of the 10 brokedown.)

Yes, this fellow won something. (I can't read the amount on the check, it's not sharp enough.) However, I couldn't take the photo of the other winner because it was me.

I went on to Omaha and came in second, winning $150.00. The winner, (whom I would have beaten if I hadn't tilted one of my plays and lost 300,000 bonus points.) got a trophy filled with $300 in quarters. Hopefully we will find photos from the Omaha tournament. It was in the Hilton, and we played in a gilded ballroom under chandeliers.

Here's my trophy.

Here's some random still life images.

And a few photos of Calvin.

I always had a camera with me, so when I saw something I wanted to remember, say a painting I really liked, I'd take a photo of it. (Most galleries wouldn't allow a flash, but had no problem with natural light.)

Here's a few paintings I liked and one of my all time favorites from the Joslyn Art museum in Omaha, NE.

Below we have 'The Rite of Spring' by William Bouguereau. He is a master at figure painting. Once when I was at the museum, the guard told me that this was the only painting at the museum under glass. One day a young man and his date had come to the museum, and the boy was so embarrassed by the painting, he threw a chair through it. They restored the painting and it's now protected from any future embarrassed young men.

Here's a LINK to a color photo of this painting.

Here's a LINK to a google image search for 'Bouguereau'.