I’ve spent much of the day doing some (much needed) tidying, and then I started trying to get some order into my slide collection and that’s where I’ve been for the last five hours…
You see, ages ago, when I first started using slide film, I started numbering all of them, thinking I’d be able to have some sort of an archiving system to make individual pictures easy to locate. Fair enough, a good idea in and of itself. Unfortunately, I never quite got around to do all the data entry necessary. I’ve lost some of the bits of paper with picture lists on them in the interveaning years. At some points I’ve had too many films, some developed and some undeveloped, all at once, and the numbering has gone a bit awry – so that 32 preceedes 25 chronologically. To make matters worse, for quite a while I had two cameras, both with slide film, so some events have got double coverage…
Then, sometime this year, I started A. using the binder pages with slide-size pockets for storage, rather than the confusing boxes, and B. started a proper database using BookCAT (marvellous tool). It’s just that A is expensive and B takes time. So I get these spurts of activity where I get 5 or six films sorted, but I still have a bit to go. This last stint, I think I’ve managed to get all the boxes left in order (by number, not chronology), and there are 25 of them on the florr next to me, all with at least 36 pictures.
Sigh.
If I can just get them catalogued, I can pick up the binder pages necessary (yikes, it’s going to cost a fortune!) when I pick up the next lot of developed slides… From Scotland, and a few places before that… 8 films. There’s another one, almost done, in the camera. I seem to have my work cut out for me…
It’s quite a lot of fun, though frustrating at times. I have a field for “date picture was taken”, but it sometimes gets rather tricky. The 1996 Eurovision Song Contest, for example. When was it? May, I’m sure, but which date? And which date, a week or two before that, did Janne and I go for a walk, take pictures of each other in sunglasses inside at a cafe I can’t identify (which one is it?) and practice our silly walks down by Festningen (the castle)? The fun, of course, comes from seeing the pictures again. In the one’s I’ve just mentioned, I have close-cropped black hair (no, really!). *giggle* And everyone dressed up for the Eurovision party. Gold and glitter deluxe. Great photos. Maybe I’ll scan them for you at some point, though I suspect I had better get permission from the people involved first…
Anyway, getting some order is a good thing. I’ve just joined the Oslo Camera Club, and I expect it will make me take more photos, not less. I’m even starting a photography beginners’ course on Thursday. It should be good. I don’t know half enough about the technicalities of the equipment (my camera has all these nifty manual functions that I never use…) and I’m sure I could do with an second opinion of some of the pictures I’ve taken earlier.
Thing is, there was something else entirely that I was supposed to do today. Ah, well. It’s too late now, it’ll have to wait until tomorrow evening.
Voice in my head: I Believe (Marcella Detroit)