Baby it’s cold outside

So I sat down and finished hand-labeling the last 1,000 slides! #OCD If i’m snowed in tomorrow, guess what I’m doing. Between slides and prints, I’m approaching 20,000 digital images. Next up, “some” image tagging. o_O

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#35mmSlides #Instaspam #OCD

Childhood winters

A random slide from the early 90’s, taken at 660 Westminster street in Allentown. (Some of you may recall the big pink house with the pool?)

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#35mmSlides #Childhood #Winter

6,000 slides

Archived slides

A couple years ago I started this project of scanning slides. About 3,000 slides in, I thought I was done… and then more slides were found. So, this is, I think, really and finally the end of scanning. I am now working through tagging the digital images to figure out which ones I’ll be posting.

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#35mmSlides #SlideScanning

North Atlantic and Mediterranean

Apropos of Veterans Day, here’s a dozen 35mm slides my father took in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean in 1965.

Aboard USS Furse (DD882) somewhere in the North Atlantic. Bruce striking a pose in front of the gun director he operated. Too cool for school! His patented, I’m-not-laughing-chuckle Passing the Rock of Gibraltar. “Hey girl…” Spain, maybe? Overlooking Genoa Italy. Also, overlooking Genoa Italy. Ever the clown, posing on a taxi on Malta.

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#35mmSlides #BruceWConstantine #OpticalPhenomenon #USNavy

DD-882

USS Furse (DD-882/DDR-882) was a Gearing-class destroyer of the United States Navy, named for Lieutenant John H. Furse USN (1886–1907).

My father served aboard as a fire control technician (as in “gun fire”); He operated a radar tracking and guidance system which controlled the targeting of the ships guns. At other times (I believe “special sea and anchor detail” being the correct parlance) he was tasked as a “phone talker” which generally entailed following a half step behind the officer of the deck (i.e., the officer commanding the ship at any given moment) and relaying communications through a microphone and headset he was wearing. (So if the Captain wants to single up all lines, he can simply say, “fo’c’s’le, bridge, single up.” and the ever-present, invisible sailer repeats it into the phones.)

Anyway. Here is a small collection of photos my father took of USS Furse.

Some of my readers are salty dogs, and will wonder how a sailor took photos of his own ship under way. During a Mediterranean cruise, Furse exchanged some sailors with a French destroyer during joint maneuvers.

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#35mmSlides #BruceWConstantine #USNavy

TBT: My dad circa 1960s

Ladies, please form an orderly line to the left.

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#35mmSlides #BruceWConstantine #Nostalgia

Niagara Falls 1968

Here are 20 (out of 36 total) slides from their honeymoon to Niagara falls in 1968.

My parents on their honeymoon Views from the Canadian side. The cable car over the whirlpool. Ever the clown; Empty pockets… Time to go home!

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#35mmSlides #BruceWConstantine #Nostalgia

Slide scanning

…2,600, (give or take a few hundred) mounted slides scanned!

Recently, I’ve been talking about my slide scanning project. I’ve been pouring hours and hours into feeding the slide scanner… it was like Little Shop of Horrors, “feed me Scan-more!!” for days on end. Except for a short stack of problem slides, I’ve completed the heavy lifting.

I’ve found hundreds of slides that I want to share. Stay tuned!

Aside: Where am I putting the digital files? My little Mac file server has a two drive RAID. On that Mac I run Arq, (which I highly recommend.) Arq backs-up all my stuff into Amazon’s Glacier. Glacier is dirt cheap storage; I mean dirt. cheap. They charge you a reasonable fee if you ever retrieve data from the storage service. (Get it? “glacier”. Frozen in ice, never to be used again. Unless you have a disaster, then you won’t care about a few hundred to defrost your data.)

The scanner of slides Individually labeled while unloading from their trays and carousels. Neatly packed away so any slide can be located. Boxes and boxes and boxes. Some 50-year-old problem slides which have unmounted themselves. Leaning tower of carousel boxes.

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#35mmSlides #BruceWConstantine #FixedIt

My dad’s 1957 Austin Healey

This was my dad’s 1957 Austin Healey.

(These slides are from 1968.)

Yes, this is my mom in 1968.

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#35mmSlides #BruceWConstantine #Cool #Nostalgia #Pretty

Giddyup!

I’ve not the least recollection of this horsey ride; But clearly, it was a thing.

Also: Not all babies are actually cute. This one is clearly “questionable.” (Yes, this is me.)

Note the Lehigh sweatshirt: Foreshadowing!!

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#35mmSlides #BruceWConstantine #Nostalgia