Archive for December, 2010

I like keeping my publicity photo current. When I decided recently to go back to wearing contacts after nearly 10 years of glasses, I realized I needed a new publicity photo. Richard was also eager to schedule a photo shoot because he (OK, we) got a new camera for Christmas and he wanted to see what it could do. We used two cameras for the photo shoot: one to take the portraits and one to film the experience. The new camera, the Nikon D7000, takes video and uses the same lenses we have for our other Nikon cameras. Richard put together a short video to show our process.

As promised, I’m sharing my collage. What do you think? There is something special about the bottle in my right hand at the arts & crafts fair. Can you tell what it is?

Much of Richard’s and my time leading up to Christmas was spent creating collages for my parents and sisters. We scanned dozens of my parents’ negatives (mostly Mom’s), cleaned dirt, and designed 18″ x 24″ collages. Here is Mom and Dad’s:

Emilye’s:

Jessica’s:

For those of you interested in the details, we used an EPSON V600 scanner, which is outfitted with a special tray for scanning 35 mm negatives. I bought a pair of white cotton gloves and used Edwal negative cleaner to prepare the negatives. Richard used Photoshop to get rid of any remaining dirt and to manipulate contrast. He used InDesign to create the collages. He exported the images as jpgs and I took them to a local photo processor. We had custom mats cut at the art supply store and put them in wooden frames. Unfortunately, the only one we mailed arrived with the glass in a million pieces. (We had insured it so we’re getting a new one made.)

Richard is working on one with pictures of me. I’ll post it when it’s ready. We’ve had lots of fun looking back at our lives in the early 70s. So glad Mom took that photography class.

I am helping my mother organize negatives and photographs from her entire career as a photographer. From the first rolls she took for a photography class to her transition to digital photography, we find ourselves with a room full of notebooks, file boxes, envelopes, albums, etc. Here are a few of me from the years we lived in Evanston, Illinois. I was in first grade for these, I think. It was before 1973 anyway.