Over the sea to Skye

A week ago, had someone asked me if I had ever visited the Isle of Skye, I would have probably said, "I don't think so". In a more adamant mood, I might simply have said "No". I would have been wrong.

Leaving aside the questionable use of photo editors and artificial intelligence, actual photographs don't lie. So, while revisiting some of my Kodak slides from the early 1970s, I came across some pictures that caused me to wonder, 'Where was that taken?'

Where was that taken?

Fortunately, there is Google. A reverse image search told me that this was a view of Uig on the Isle of Sky. Really? Sure enough, a bit of playing around with Google Street View, allowed me to see Uig from close to the spot I must have stood to take the photo:

Google Street View looking over Uig

There have been changes in the last 50 years: The wharf at Uig has been extended, grass no longer grows in the middle of the road, and barriers have been erected to protect the careless.

The revelation of a Skye visit also made sense of some other photos, like a picture of churning water, taken from a boat - the Skye ferry (before the current Skye bridge was built) and the view from Duntulm Castle (apparently now fenced off from the public).

View from Duntulm Castle

Many photographers travel the globe looking for unusual places to photograph. Of course, that inevitably leads to others following in their footsteps and the uniqueness of those photographs soon fades. 

I'm just back from a virtual visit to Skye in the 1970s. The 1970s was pre-internet, pre-Instagram, pre the explosion of digital photography. If you want a picture of Uig without Armco barriers or the view from a now-inaccessible castle, then I'm sorry; you're a bit late. Isn't time travel wonderful? 

I like the 1970s, "Over the bridge to Skye" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Lisbon, please - 1974 should do.

This time-travel lark can get a bit addictive. It works like this - take an old photo from the archive, digitize it, then go search on Google to see what the location looks like today.

This one is from Lisbon (1974) - Flower sellers in Rossio Square. Today the square is almost unrecognisable. Gone are the neon advertising hoardings (visible in the top corners), the overhead tram lines are no more, the buildings have been spruced up and Rossio Square is now a large modern plaza with beautiful paving. See this picture. (My picture was taken from the centre of this frame facing towards the left.)

This is the port of Lisbon. In the background is what was then known as the “Salazar Bridge”, a 2.2km suspension bridge spanning the Tejo River (modeled on San Francisco's  Golden Gate bridge). Later it was renamed as “Ponte 25 de Abril” (25 April Bridge) to commemorate the revolution that brought democracy to Portugal and found my car surrounded by soldiers demanding that the Englishman get out with his hands raised. Interesting year, 1974.

Today, the spot where the boat is sitting has been totally redeveloped and there is no space for beached boats in the modern Port of Lisbon. Nor was I was I able to find a photo taken near the same spot.

Lisbon has not only benefited from the passage of forty plus years, but also from the transition from a dictatorship to a European style democracy. It is now a thoroughly modern city chock-a-block with cars, though it still boasts a few tram routes - but nothing like the huge network it had in the mid twentieth century.

Andorran time traveler

I always have trouble locating Andorra; for some reason my brain keeps telling me that Andorra is in the Andes, whereas it is actually several thousand miles away in the Pyrenees.  Andora is a lovely place marred only by the fact that it has basically one road and, in the summer, ten million tourists - which makes for a permanent traffic jam through the capital, Andorra la Vella.

Anyway, I found this slide of Sant Joan De Caselles in Canillo. When I visited in the mid 1970s it was a rather unkempt building stuck on a hillside and calling out for a little TLC. None the less, it was a beautifully rugged example of Romanesque architecture and well worth a picture.

Fast forward forty years and have a look at this link: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/73596078. The same church now stands in its own pristine grounds alongside a modern highway with its own car-park and what looks like hotel accommodation. Absolutely wonderful - even if the stone wall in the foreground has gone and it's not as beautifully rugged as I recall.

By the way, my fading brain cells had forgotten where I had taken the picture. But, by throwing the picture into Google image search, it was easy to verify the building and its location. Google; the poor man's Tardis.

Back to Versailles

I am enjoying resurrecting these old 35mm slides. Slides produced the original SoC (straight out of camera) shots. There was no opportunity to massage or post process; what the camera put onto the film was what you got. Revisiting these pictures over 40 years later and with modern post processing tools, allows a fresh interpretation unfettered by any memory of what it actually looked like on the day. The results tend to be more interpretive, perhaps a little 'painterly' - especially as these old slides lack the detail we have come to expect from modern digital cameras.

One thing I have noticed in these old photos, when comparing to today's Google street view, is that the French used to let their trees grow in a more natural way. Today these trees are all so much smaller, perfectly trimmed to a degree that makes the view more open, less natural. I wonder what the original landscapers would have to say about that.

Anyway, this one is from Versailles; "La Grand Perspective" with the "Escaliers de Latone" in the foreground.

Scanbot

Usually I download an app to my phone, only to find a few weeks later that I never use it and it ends up being deleted. Some apps like Feedly wheedle themselves into your daily life. But rarely does an app become more and more useful as time goes on. Such an app is Scanbot.

For the last couple of years I have been going paperless, scanning most documents I receive on a flat-bed scanner and dumping the paper. It’s worth it to save collecting boxes of receipts, warranties and bills but it’s a tedious process, especially if I let the paperwork back up for a few weeks.

Then I found Scanbot - Android (free), iOS (paid). Here’s the deal; put your document on a flat surface, hold your phone over the document, pause and the document is ‘scanned’ - actually photographed, squared off, trimmed and saved as a PDF. Multi-page documents are no problem and get combined into a multi-page PDF. Super easy and I can scan documents as they arrive and immediately bin the paper. Scanned documents are automatically uploaded to my Dropbox account (other cloud services are supported).

Then I found another use. Turning the hundreds of old family photos into digital. My digital photo library started in 2001. Before that it is folders of printed photos collected over a few decades of camera toting family life. I didn’t have very high hopes but scanbot, combined with my phone’s 13Mp camera, does a wonderful job of turning the prints into reasonable digital images. Colours are true and, while you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, a few tweaks in Lightroom can often improve on the quality of original print.

The results are perfectly usable for online use and for reprinting at the original size. I probably wouldn’t print larger, but this was from a wallet sized print taken in 1982: