The Thrasher Jubilee

This last weekend I attended the Thrasher Jubilee in Frederick County, Maryland. This was a reunion of several families: the descendants of Benjamin Thrasher who died in Maryland ca 1740, the descendants of John Thrasher who purchased land in Goochland Co., VA in 1738, the descendants of James Lee, a neighbor of the aforementioned Benjamin Thrasher, and several other unrelated Thrasher families. With this mix, it seemed appropriate to call it a jubilee.

This is a photo of the picnic dinner on Saturday night on the Thomas Thrasher farm near Jefferson, MD. This farm dates back to about 1750 and still is in the Thrasher family. Some people are eating, some are talking, and some are wandering around. It is not a great picture from a photo composition perspective. Too confused. However it captures the feel of the event.

Paris, Je T'aime

Yesterday we saw a little gem of a film called "Paris Je T'aime". It consists of about 20 unconnected short stories about life in Paris - some amusing, some sad. It is in French with subtitles, but about half the time the Parisians are speaking English.

This film seems to have slipped under the radar screen. We have not seen a review. We only learned about it by word of mouth. Word seems to be getting around. We were surprised that on Sunday afternoon the little theater was nearly full.

This is the best film we have seen this year. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Aging of Color Slides

I have just finished scanning a carousel containing 71 color slides taken in 1961 through 1963. They have all been in the same box for at least the last 35 years and I know that 30 years ago they were all in very good condition. I learned something that I had never heard or read in any book or magazine.

Three of the slides were Kodachrome. The Kodachromes were all in good condition. The remaining 68 were Ektachrome. Some of the Ektachrome slides were in like-new condition. Some were moderately faded. Some were severely faded. Why should some Ektachromes be faded and some not? They were all stored under exactly the same conditions. They were all the same film from the same manufacturer. Looking carefully, the answer became clear. There were slides from six different rolls of Ektachrome and each roll had been processed at a different time. In any roll, if one was good they were all good. If one was bad the slides in that roll were equally bad. Whether the slides aged depended on how well the processing was done.

In the 1960s, Kodak still processed film. I usually paid a premium price to have Kodak processing. The best roll was processed by Kodak. The wost roll was processed by Kodak. One roll processed by Drewry Photocolor was pretty good.

I knew that some color films are more resistant to aging than others. I knew that storage conditions are very important. Heat and moisture are to be avoided at all cost. But I never knew that processing was such an importan factor. (And now, forty years later, I have learned that you could not trust Kodak processing. To me, that's a real eye opener.)

The photo above was taken in 1961. It is of my grandmother holding daughter Nancy. I would call this a case of moderate aging. Using Photoshop, the original colors can nearly be restored although it could never look as good as the original. Alternatively, this could be made into a good looking black and white.

The worst cases of aging of the slides in this carousel were so bad that almost all color was gone. They are beyond repair. The clear moral is that if you have any color slides or negatives, you should have them scanned onto a CD or DVD now. Do not wait.

Do not get the impression that we have lost a lifetime of photographic memories. I never trusted color and took many photos in black and white. About half of the color slides are Kodachrome which is more resistant to fading. I took thousands of photos and if 90% of them disappeared there would still be more than enough left.