scanning the past

I recently bought myself a slide scanner.



A nifty little device which has allowed me to revisit some very old pictures I took 24 years ago.

It is far from perfect as reproducing from a positive transparency is difficult. I needed to use a fair amount of Photoshop to try and make the image a little more presentable after the scanning.

Below is a before and after image showing the difference.




I was on a year long trip which began with a month in Japan where I went to see the snow festival in Sapporo on the north island of Hokkaido. These snow festivals seem fairly common these days in various parts of the world, but I think Sapporo back in the '80's was one of very few places holding this type of festival.

Apart from enormous one third scale reproductions of well known international buildings, there were also numerous giant 3D representations of popular comic characters. In addition there was also a section in the centre of the city devoted to ice sculpture carving.