Story of the week

We seem to live in a time when nearly all the news is bad news. America continues to 'go to the dogs', the planet is burning and no one in charge seems to care, the rich get richer while the homeless are to be "moved on" so that we are not reminded that they exist. That's a small smattering from the last few days. In the midst of such despair and gloom comes the story of "Fedora Man".

In case you were asleep while the Louvre was being robbed, "Fedora Man" was the gentleman photographed outside the museum walking past the police cordon.

"Fedora Man"

Perhaps, Fedora Man was a Parisian detective, the Internet wondered. And very quickly, his picture went viral. That, however, was not the story. According to Stuff here: https://www.stuff.co.nz/world-news/360880555/fedora-man-unmasked-meet-teen-behind-louvre-mystery, Fedora Man was fifteen-year-old Pedro Elias Garzon Delvaux, who has a penchant for dressing up 1940s style and who happens to like the characters of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. He also happened to be on a trip to the Louvre with his mother the day that it was robbed.

Pedro, as most fifteen-year-olds might, could have held his hand up and said, "That's me, I'm famous!" But no, Pedro, lover of mystery stories, let it run for three weeks, until too many people were asking, "Was that you?" Then he told his story. I won't repeat it here, you can read it yourself at the link above. But, in a world infested with so much crude brutality, we need more Pedros. People unafraid to bring elegance to the ordinariness of the everyday, to inject some mystery into the banality of life and just have some simple fun. Perhaps those are 2025's crown jewels. Guard them, there are thieves about.

On to the past

It’s likely to be a long job; getting a few hundred 35mm Kodachrome slides digitised. It’s not making the digital file that takes time (just a few seconds for each slide) but it’s the time spent making the file presentable afterwards. Take this 1970s image of the Sacre-Coeur in Paris for example - a few seconds to copy, but two hours to clean up. I’m pretty happy with the result but it’s shown me one thing - our equipment today produces results hugely superior to that I used in the film days.

We might worry about digital noise today, but that was nothing compared to the grain that was omnipresent on every 35mm Kodachrome slide. The DSLR I used to copy this picture was more than capable of enhancing every bit of grain on the slide - and don’t dare sharpen the image until you’ve dealt with it. Then there is the dust (and other nasties); if you thought sensor dust was a problem, then you’ll be amazed at what accumulates on a slide that is forty years old. Yes, I used a dust blower and a lens brush but there is stuff on them slides that don’t want to leave home! Fortunately, Lightroom and Photoshop have the tools required to take the image to a place that makes it look better than the original slide - provided you can supply the time.

Long hair, beards and wandering around with a guitar slung over your shoulder; yep, that was the 1970s.