thedude.com

I know my posting has been rather sporadic lately. My excuse is that while doing a bit of spring cleaning in the garage, I discovered a huge cache of negatives from the distant past.

You know by now that I’ve had a life-long passion for photography, and years ago, made the fateful decision to purchase a beautiful, lightly used Pentax 6 x 7 at the local drug store for a mere 450 bucks. More importantly, I made a commitment to myself to actually use it, and I did.

So now, I have more than 1,000 2-1/4″ x 2-3/4″ negatives. They are of excellent quality, and mostly in color. There are also many black and white images like this one - shot against a roll of white paper in the dining room. I have pictures of a couple dozen bands I knew in the late seventies and early eighties. I don’t even know some of the people in these photos, but I am so happy to have them. I have wedding pictures, graduation photos, pictures of ex-girlfriends, family photos and much more. The pictures capture a time and a place in my life like nothing else could. Memories flood over me.

Scanning these images is time-consuming. The negatives were developed in a sink in my basement, so they weren’t very clean to begin with. Add to that decades of less-than-optimal storage, and you wind up with a scan that requires a LOT of retouching. My Nikon film scanner has awesome features that work only with color negative and transparency film. It’s capabilities with black and white are more limited, so scans of black and white negatives are “pure” - I can’t just click an option in the scanning software and have the scanner clean up all of the dust and scratches. It takes two to three hours to get an image like this in shape. To me the results are worth it.

I’ve been scanning one or two images a day and sending them to a mailing list of friends from the past. They comment on the images, and revive other memories. It takes time away from my blogging, but the whole scanning/retouching/e-mailing process s a labor of love.

We had dinner with our friends Steve and Debra at Sam’s Anchor Cafe in lovely, affluent Tiburon. Sam’s Cam showed a crowded deck before we left for Tiburon, but by the time we got there the fog had moved in and it was freezing, so we ate inside. The seared Ahi tuna in an orange ginger sauce tasted as good as it looks. Yum!

Chris’ grandfather, Struthers Burt, founded the first dude ranch in Wyoming - the Bar B C. We toured what remains of this historic ranch.

An attempt is being made at restoring the site, but so far, the birthplace of Chris’ dad (seen above) remains as it was - untouched for decades.

While at Hugh’s party, I ran into my favorite hostess from a popular lunch destination - Bucci’s. I have always been amazed by her stunning blue eyes. Luckily, Laura was kind enough to let an old, drunk dude snap a few shots.

What a beauty!

Sorry I haven’t blogged much lately. We’ve had some problems at work and my mood has been a bit gloomy. Sadness has a way of sapping your creative urges.

Yesterday my coworkers and I met at Kitty’s in Emeryville to send off another of my favorite coworkers. Hugh (aka Huge) and I have worked side-by-side for almost six years. He’s an amazingly talented SysAdmin, musician and a great friend. I am very sad to see him go.

Best wishes to you, Hugh!

Chris and I have much in common, but by far the best thing we share is our beautiful wives. (Hm. That doesn’t sound exactly right…) There is nothing like the feeling that comes with knowing you’ll share the rest of your life with the kindest, most loving, most talented and beautiful women you have ever known. We are s-o-o-o lucky!

The scene has changed a lot since 1941, and I had very little snow and no clouds at all to work with. So that’s my excuse.

Chris knows this part of the world like the back of his hand, so he took us to several of his favorite spots. He led us on a few short hikes and one very long one. (More on that later.) We drove up Shadow Mountain, (Google Earth Placemark) and back down to Jenny Lake for a dip in the cold clear water. We visited the original Bar B C Ranch and saw the cabin where Chris’ dad was born.

I saw numerous examples of images like these in galleries throughout Jackson. (The cabin in the scenes below is the most photographed structure in the park.) Many were shot with a large format camera and exhibited breathtaking sharpness and supernatural colors.

One thing that these images have in common - yes, even those shot by thedude - is that none of them would look quite this good without serious manipulations in PhotoShop. (Shhh… They’ll never notice.)