This is the last of four posts on a big pile of found film I got recently – 13 rolls of Ektachrome slide film requiring processing using E2 and E3 chemical processes, neither of which have been available since the early 1970s. The photos were mostly in and around Yellowstone National Park; a few rolls were marked “eclipse” (they didn’t turn out) – and then there was this roll with an odd mix of photos on it.
This batch of photos all came out way too dark after processing (in black and white chemicals) – with a thick additional layer that I could probably have worked to remove, but was afraid to damage the image (see part 1 in this series). They were too dark to be picked up by my scanner, so I had to use my Coca-Cola case lightbox trick again. I photographed them with a backlight, which produced something like this:
I then used photoshop to invert the digital image (using black and white processing turned what should have been “slide film” into negative film – which produced something like this:
This was then converted to a black and white photo and then I adjusted contrast, brightness and a few other things, and then rotated 90 degrees, ending up with this:
In the end, I had images, but I didn’t really know what they were of. Most of the photos in this batch were similar. Was the photographer photographing mushrooms?
Then there was this odd shot – some sort of amusement park? Does anyone know what this is?
And finally, my favorite in the bunch – a guy working on his model train.
The best part of this picture is his buddy, on the left – who appears to be wearing an engineer’s hat! Am I right?
You have to see David Lynch’s “Eraserhead” to understand these images