Orphaned Objects

It’s not that I’ve been too lazy to update this blog – oh no indeed! Far from it as a matter of fact. A good Curator is adept at prioritising tasks to ensure the best work is done in the best time so in the last, ahem, four months I’ve simply been working on more time-critical endeavours. Like, erm, digging a pond. And catching up with my hobby of sitting down. And drawing naff cartoons. So there. I will not be giving up the day job. Thanks for asking.   In amongst this there’s been a major funding bid to submit, a conservation-based chemistry course to get stuck into (more in a future blog…) and, last month, a museum to re-open. I know, I know – excuses excuses… Anyway… BACK AT THE SCANNING. What’s going on with the project to digitise my family’s slide collection? Well it’s kind of, erm, done. Yup. 6,451 transparencies all scanned and catalogued, a chronicle of family activities between the early 1960s and 2000. Boom. Done. Oldest and most recent slides. Each is prese...

 It's bright today. Really bright. Bright sun high in the sky, white snow on the ground, bright bright bright. Over my lunch break I decided to run a few 35mm negatives through the scanner just to keep grinding away at the Sisyphean task of digiting my family's photo collection. First scan appeared thus; Attack of the Black Smudge! Coming to a cinema near you. Ugh, this isn't good. And most peculiar - there's no marks at all on the negative, nary even a speck of dust as that gets blown off first. This is very annoying and I'm getting all hot and bothered. Ah! Hot and bothered in the glare of the incredibly bright wintery-snowy-reflecty sun. One quick shut of the curtains and a rescan later and; Absence of the Black Smudge! Coming to a cinema near you, but not very exciting. There we go. So the scanner, perched near the window, was getting overwhelmed by the sun blazing in one side. This hasn't been an issue so far given that this project has taken place in the d...