What Is Old Is New Again

Hi!  Wow, I can't believe it's been over a month since my last post.  I'm sorry for being away for so long but this time of year is always really tough on me and I've had to take some time to regroup and find my center again.  Now that things are settling down I'm feeling much better and I've missed you guys. :-)  Thanks for hanging in there with me.

I'd like to share with you something fun I've been working on today.  A few weeks ago my trusted old printer finally gave up the ghost and after a lot of research I finally have a shiny new Canon Pixma MG8120.  If you're looking for a high quality mid-priced multifunction printer/copier/scanner I highly recomend it. 

One of the things that really sold me on this particular printer was its ability to scan negatives and slides.  You see, before I started doing digital art I studied photography.  This was way back in the days of film and I have boxes of negatives and slides that have been gathering dust for, oh, about 20 years now.  Today I started scanning.

What is so exciting for me is that now, with the help of my computer, I can take some of the negatives that I had previously rejected because of bad lighting or bad backgrounds and give them new life.  Take this image for example:
This is a shot I took of my brother about 18 years ago.  The image on the left is straight out of the scanner.  I loved this portrait for its composition and especially for his expression but it is full of technical errors.  Besides being old and discolored, his face is way too dark and could that sky be any more boring?  I don't think so.  I won't even mention the giant piece of wood jabbing him in the head.  But, hey, I was still learning so I made a mental note to work on my lighting skills and pay more attention to the background in the future and I threw it in the reject pile and moved on.

But now that I have new skills (and a new film scanner) I have finally been able to create the image the way I had imagined it all those years ago. I love you Photoshop!! :-)

A big Thank You to lrargerich @ Flickr for the sky