June's Pictures

I mentioned a couple of posts back that I inherited my stepmother's camera, which I've experimented with a bit. Well, yesterday, while going through the camera bag, I found a couple of memory cards. One had lots and lots of photos on it, so naturally, I tried looking through them.

I expected them to be from her extensive travels, and they were. But most of the files were corrupted. It seems the card itself was damaged or maybe just worn out. I wound up spending an hour or two combing through the digital wreckage to see what I could salvage.

In the end, I was able to download 210 pictures, some not worth keeping. Like many people, June took lots of pictures out the windows of moving vehicles, or mistakenly had the camera set for video, or was zoomed so far in that everything is pixillated like crazy. Turns out the camera she was using was a Nikon Coolpix B500, so not even the same camera I have now.

But anyway, here are some of the photos I saved. They may already exist somewhere in my stepmother's digital archives -- hopefully she was able to download the data card herself. But maybe not? Who knows.

The picture above was taken in July 2021 on Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.

This was a drumming demonstration in Japan in 2018. You can see June standing against the back wall in the middle. All these photos were taken on cruises -- she loved cruising.

This appears to be Norway -- there's an adjacent photo of a fjord. Google tells me it's a folkloric celebration of summer, and indeed this was right around the summer solstice. (We actually met up with June in Greenwich right after this cruise, before she flew home.)

This is a "whirling dervish" dancer in Egypt, I believe.

Another shot from Egypt, showing the temple at Karnak. (Dave and I went there ourselves the following year.)

I had to Google this because I didn't immediately recognize that skyline -- it's Dubai, where I've never been.

I believe this is in Hawaii -- some kind of traditional dance. (There are adjacent photos showing the landscape around Kilauea.)

And finally, from July 2021, there are several pictures of the giant troll sculptures at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay. This one is known as "Søren." I vaguely remember June showing these to me sometime after her trip, so perhaps she was able to get the pictures off the card.

There are lots more, including some of June herself, and ultimately I'll put them in an album on Flickr. I found it really poignant to look through this collection of images, at least the fraction of them that I could save. She did have a lot of fun, and good for her.