Sorry for your loss.
Something you can tell Meg about those old negatives ...
In 1996 Hurricane Fran nearly destroyed my house. It blew half the roof off
followed by torrential rain. The half of the house that was inundated included
the room where I had the binders with all of my sleeved negatives, contact
sheets & slides.
After the rain drenched the the shelves where the binders were located, the
ceiling came down and collapsed the shelves, burying the binders under old
plaster & rock-wool insulation. Because of the burden of other duties (National
Guard was activated for disaster relief) it was a couple of weeks before I could
get to them.
I managed to salvage less than half a dozen pages out of 6 or 7 binders. I
couldn't even salvage the binders themselves. All these years later it still
hurts to think about the loss.
"Why keep those?"
They're the history of your life. Even if you never look at more than a few of
them, they still are who you were and who you are.
On 5/26/2020 22:33:49, Stan Halpin wrote:
As some of you know, our home was flooded last week, high water at 27 3/8
inches inside. So we have been hauling stuff out, a lot to the curb for trash
pickup, much still to be sorted, decisions about what to try to
preserve/restore... [Side note. Most of my camera gear was high and dry, my
computer also, my five backup external drive all had water inside which I
poured out. We’ll find their fate sometime but not now.]
So, sitting tonight going over tomorrow’s schedule and priorities. I mention
that I want to tackle the 15-20 binders that hold my sleeved negatives and
contact prints and selected proof prints. Meg says: “why? Why keep those?
Will you ever use them?” Hmm, well Meg, you have been after me to print a few
flower macros and most of my favorites were with the 645. I suppose I could
go back to using a 645Z and go off looking for flowers. Meg says: “That would
make more sense than trying to recover those thousands of negatives just to
find and produce 5 prints.” I think she has a point. Particularly if it turns
out that my digital archives are also toast.
Starting next Monday a professional cleaning crew of 5-6 persons will spend
3-4 days mitigating the flood damage, sanitizing, and cleaning. Another 2
weeks after that of high powered fans for drying. Meanwhile we’ll be looking
for new stove, refrigerator, furnace/boiler, hot water heaters, washer and
dryer, bedroom furniture, living room furniture... Assuming that our
insurance coverage comes through, by July this will mostly be behind us and I
can revisit that thought about a 645Z...
Thought for the day: avoid floods.
Stan
Sent from my
--
Science - Questions we may never find answers for.
Religion - Answers we must never question.
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