Another Photo Extravaganza

H

HFWR

Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
Joined
May 10, 2005
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Location
Lawn chair in Texas
One of the things I've been doing while a man of leisure is scanning photos and recording old LPs and tapes to mp3.

Way back in '86, my former megaconglomocorp, for some inexplicable reason, sent me to Japan for 16 days.

This is a much younger me (left), on the street of Tokyo, with two other gaijineers...

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One weekend day, our "hosts" took us on a nice drive north of Tokyo to see a shogun shrine at Nikko. The drive was made ever more memorable by the constant chiming the car made whenever you exceeded the speed limit... :p

Anyway, I won't bother you with details. Here's are some links for background info:

Nikko Travel Guide

Nikkō, Tochigi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cover of the tourist guide...

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Pardon the photos; they are scans of 22yo snapshots, made with a cheap-assed camera, on a gloomy day in February...

The view from the parking lot:

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And the view looking back at the gate:

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The shogun's garage:

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And another building of some sort. Shoes had to be removed to enter, and, as indicated by the snow on the ground, it was colder than kraut.

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Various statues...

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This is one of the two guardians of the gate:

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Tomb of Iteyasu, first shogun on the hill:

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A monolith that was not worthy of mention in the tour guide:

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And, the shogun's alarm clock:

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And the piece de resistance, the Japanese equivalent of the Soap Box Forum:

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(Ok, they're the keepers of the Sacred Stable)
 
Japan is one of those places that has been on my must go visit list for a long time. Have you been back since or was this your only visit.

BTW taking into account the vintage of these photos you look quite normal. By that I mean when I look at my photos from the 70s/80s all I think is what on earth was I thinking when I wore that outfit or had that perm. Why didn't someone tell me how bad I looked instead of allowing me to go out looking like a poodle.
 
Thanks for the photo tour - I very much enjoyed it.
 
Nice. I scanned some old faded polaroids from the 1960's using picasa and its 'fade' filter. Produced some amazingly good results. Nice clean shots, picked the colors back up, and we could see who the heck that was in the background that was just a little too small in the original picture.
 
cute fuzzy bunny said:
Nice. I scanned some old faded polaroids from the 1960's using picasa and its 'fade' filter. Produced some amazingly good results. Nice clean shots, picked the colors back up, and we could see who the heck that was in the background that was just a little too small in the original picture.
Click to expand...
Thanks I didn't know Picasa had that- I'm going to get the thousands of old fashioned photos out as soon as I get all the firewood cut and stacked and the supplies put in for the upcoming 7 month Minnesota winter - sitting between the fire and my all-in-one should keep me toasty and occupied until I can come out and sniff the fresh air again.
 
DangerMouse said:
Japan is one of those places that has been on my must go visit list for a long time. Have you been back since or was this your only visit.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, that was my only visit... But the price was right!


BTW taking into account the vintage of these photos you look quite normal. By that I mean when I look at my photos from the 70s/80s all I think is what on earth was I thinking when I wore that outfit or had that perm. Why didn't someone tell me how bad I looked instead of allowing me to go out looking like a poodle.
Click to expand...

You should have seen my passport photo. My beard was about four inches long. I was glad when it came time to renew, so I could replace it with a more "normal" photo...

Couldn't find a copy to post here. Think Orthodox Jew meets Charles Manson... :p
 
cute fuzzy bunny said:
Nice. I scanned some old faded polaroids from the 1960's using picasa and its 'fade' filter. Produced some amazingly good results. Nice clean shots, picked the colors back up, and we could see who the heck that was in the background that was just a little too small in the original picture.
Click to expand...

I didn't try to "doctor" these, mostly 'cause I was too lazy... :rolleyes:

I'll have to investigate.
 
It was pretty easy. In the advanced section for scanning options they had a 'scratch and dust' filter and fade filter with low/medium/high settings. IIRC when I changed them from "off" to "low", then did a prescan it'd set both options to the right level for the photo. I hadnt used picasa for scanning before. Only thing I didnt care much for was that it put each scan into its own separate directory with all of them being the same file name. Probably something I could have corrected in an option somewhere but I didnt find it until I was done. No biggie, just had to rename 50 "image.jpg" files to something else and then do a mass copy.
 
Nice pics. However, I am a bit disappointed there were no twisted tator booths.
 
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