Nap Time

No, my father never found any dead bodies in cars, at least as far as we know. But this unidentified man clearly was sleeping like the dead when my dad took a picture of him.

Slide and Negative Comparison

I mentioned a while ago that my dad often shot with a slide film, but got it developed at a place where he get both slides and negatives back. This was a rare thing, usually most places would offer you one or the other, not both.
And I realize that to most of you under 30, the terms "film" and "slides" are meaningless. But that's another story.
A while ago I published a couple of photos by dad of the fountain in Centennial Square. That original post was scanned from slides. Recently, I discovered the negatives of the same shots. Now you can compare the two. I've done no tweaking to them; these are straight off the scanner. Both hold up pretty well for being 40 years old, but it does look to me like the slides' colour is starting to go a little to the pinkish side, something I found in a lot of dad's old slides.

Negative:

Slide:

Negative:

Slide:

On the Rocks

My father curled. Or so I've been told. Strangely enough, I have no recollection of him ever curling, or going to a curling rink to watch him curl. In fact, I don't think I've ever watched anyone curl in a rink. Curling is one great Canadian winter sport that has somehow passed me by. That said, I do know my dad curled as he had a couple of very small curling trophies that he had won. I know what you're thinking, that this is all leading up to an "A ha!" moment wherein I present newly-discovered photographic evidence that he curled. Well, no. Sorry. I think he gave up curling after his eye surgeries in the early 1960s before I was born. However, he did take some pictures of some other curlers in the late 1960s.

Light

Another of Dad's "product placement" photos.

Guy in an Office

Here's a picture Dad took of a guy in an office. I don't know who, what or why. When is probably the late 1960s.

Bannister

I'm finding many of Dad's photos are not as well documented as others. I can't tell you anything about this one, other than late 1960s. It appears to be part of a series that Dad took of a house or small apartment building. His documentation is really odd, like he's gone back to record everything after the fact, but in many cases it seems like he made no effort to sort things out before recording them. Some backyard family party pictures will be next to a school fire in the negative book, yet one last picture from the party will be hidden away on a different negative strip in another book, so it's all very mixed up. I like the shadows here, playing against the brightness of the bannister pole.

Christmas 1964

Almost two, here's me taking my new friend for a walk down the hall 50 years ago today. Apparently, I walked him down the hall for hours.

Camera Club Girls IV

Another selection of Dad's photos of models from his camera club in Montréal. It's pretty easy to understand why he was a member.

Peddle Car - The Sequel

Obviously, I must have loved this peddle cat -- I published a previous picture by my dad of me riding in it. In this photo, I seem to be taking it a lot more seriously. Maybe in this one I haven't got my licence yet and I'm still studying the rules of the road.

Lake Memphremagog

Sunset on Lake Memphremagog. Unless it's a sunrise. Or maybe a moonrise. Don't ask me, I wasn't even born yet.

Then and Now: Rockies Road

In the summer of 1976, my dad rented a VW camper van and the two of us drove around southern BC and the Rockies. There's a chance that I might have taken this one; I held his camera while he was driving and was taking shots out the window. But we did stop to take shots, so it's hard to know which of us took which shots as that knowledge has passed into the misty murkiness of failing memories. Regardless, it was taken somewhere on the road between Jasper and Banff, somewhere near the Columbia Icefield. What I love about this picture is the curving of the layers of rock. Can you imagine the force needed to bend those layers over time? Wow.

Clearly, this mountain made an impression on me, as in 2013 I took a new picture of the same mountain.