Thursday, March 10, 2022

The Magic Bus

Our friend Cheryl (who is now deceased) came with us on our Loire Valley trip in 2001. She spent a week with us and then went back to Paris for a week on her own. We rented a car on arrival in Paris and the three of us drove down to our vacation rental in Vouvray. It turned out that the air conditioning in the car didn't work, so Ken arranged to turn the car in and get another. The only vehicle they had was a big van (I guess we'd call it a mini van in the US). It felt huge compared to the little car we had, and it wasn't easy to maneuver on the tiny streets in French cities and towns.

The Magic Bus parked outside our rental house in Vouvray. Digitized color slide, Spring 2001.
My camera started to scrape a line across the slides. I didn't know until they were developed.

Cheryl immediately dubbed the van "The Magic Bus" and we called it that for the rest of the time she was with us. Ken drove her back up to Paris when it was time and I think he got another car while there. He came back to Vouvray with our friend CHM and we stayed for a few more days before going back up to Paris for the end of our vacation.

8 comments:

  1. The return from Paris to Vouvray was epic! Ken and I went to Beauvais and Rouen where we stayed a couple of days then to Vouvray. There were many churches and chateaux along the way and Ken called you every hour or so to tell you when we’d be there and then there would be some chateau or church to delay us. We finally got home, but very late!

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  2. And now I have to look up the lyrics of Magic Bus so I can complete the song and get it out of my head.

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  3. As one who has scanned thousands of slides over the years, I must say that your scans are very good! Yes, you can tell they are not originally in digital format, and yes, they look a little dated - but hey, that's what the original slide was in the first place! Well done. You must have quite an upmarket scanner (?) or you are good at Photoshop. (You can remove most of that red line, but I guess, if you have hundreds of slides with a red line, it is hard to know where to start.)

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  4. "My camera started to scrape a line across the slides.".... but, with a healing brush, you can clone it out!!
    And David says "yes, they look a little dated - but hey, that's what the original slide was in the first place!" And, many cameras now come with a built in setting to recreate the look of a slide film!!

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    1. Tell me, Tim, what about a setting to recreate the look of a Daguerréotype?

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    2. chm.... there are "filters" for exactly that that can be purchased for Photoshop....
      a group of preset actions can be loaded and applied to the picture.
      And, whilst I haven't purchased any, I have purchased "watercolour" actions... and they are never expensive... a few Euros each set [usually about 100 different finishes]
      I don't "do" N&B/B&W, but there are sets available to recreate the finish applied by people like Ansel Adams and Co.

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  5. chm, I remember it well.

    mitch, ha!

    david, I'm scanning in Photoshop and processing in Lightroom. For now, I'm not worrying about the red line, just trying to get the slides scanned and accessible.

    tim, one day!

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    1. tim, one day! - why not do it as you scan.... you are going direct into PottyShop... choose "The Bandaid" from the side bar and drag it across the screen whilst holding "Shift" which makes a straight line run.... wait two seconds and then save to Lightroom.

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