Near Misses

Jan. 1973

I'm off to Vienna this morning, but believe it or not I'm writing this post live, rather than packing. I'm only going for three days so packing won't be very complicated! Plus my flight doesn't leave until 12:30 p.m. so I have plenty of time.

Yesterday I decided to finally dispose of all the slides I'd culled from the first two batches I bought. I started with about 2,200 slides, I'd guess, and during my initial sorting I'd probably put half in the trash pile, like the ones in my "Rejects" post from a few days back. Most of them are blurry, dark or otherwise damaged. Some are just boring.

But before I finally tossed them I wanted to give them all a second look, to make sure some pictures weren't worth keeping. Here are four of about ten I pulled out of the trash pile to save.

July 1967

June 1974

Feb. 1974

(The dates I'm giving are the dates on the slide. Obviously the picture above wasn't taken in February -- it's probably from the summer of 1973. I don't usually save flower pictures, unless they're unusual, because -- like pictures of the ocean, mountains, countryside or sunsets --they're seldom very interesting without a memory or story attached. But as a dahlia enthusiast I decided to give this one a reprieve.)

June 1976

I don't know why this one was in the trash pile -- it's a nice shot, with Mama Duck standing guard while her babies get fed by that girl. This shows why it's always good to give everything a second look!

Then I put the trash slides in a plastic bag and put it in the bin. I thought about trying to find someone to take them for craft projects or something like that, but I'm afraid someone unscrupulous will try to sell them on for the photographs, and having already been picked through, they're just not worth that. It's best to just toss them.

I've only barely looked at the three bags of slides I acquired most recently. Some of them feature the same people as the slides above, so obviously they came (at least in part) from the same families. I'll deal with those when I finish scanning the current ones. The Flickr album is up to 104 images, and there are at least 50 more to go!