BS: Nostalgia needs a picture

Subject: BS: Nostalgia needs a picture
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Nov 09 - 01:13 PM

Sad development: The last Kodachrome film lab

Little Kansas town is now only place in the world to process once-iconic film

By Bob Dotson
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 9:48 a.m. CT, Fri., Nov . 27, 2009

[quotes from the link, which includes some nice nostalgic commentary along with the report]

I saw a sign in the window of a photographer's studio the other day. It read: "If you have beauty, we'll take it. If you have none, we'll fake it."

Half a century ago, 2,000 film labs processed Kodachrome in the United States. Now, Dwayne's Photo in tiny Parsons, Kansas, is the last one — in the entire world.

Dwayne Steinle's son Grant watches over all our colorful memories.

"When you woke up one day and found you were the last of the last, what did you think?" I ask.

"It's kind of pride mixed with sadness, because Kodak isn't making Kodachrome any more," Grant says.

After 74 years, it has shut down production of a product so iconic Utah named a state park after it, the only one in the country named for a brand of film.

Customers around the world are scrambling to develop their last rolls before Dwayne's stops processing Kodachrome at the end of 2010. A thousand rolls a day tumble into this town of 10,000 on the Kansas prairie.

[end quotes]

You can visit the processor's website at www.dwaynesphoto.com

The Kodak announcement that they have discontinued the film is perhaps also worth a glance, at June 22, 2009: Kodak Retires KODACHROME Film; Celebrates Life of Oldest Film Icon in its Portfolio

So if you've got a roll you forgot to send in ...

John

Subject: RE: BS: Nostalgia needs a picture
From: GUEST,999
Date: 28 Nov 09 - 02:36 PM

It also needs a song . . . .



When I think back
On all the crap I learned in high school
It's a wonder
I can think at all
And though my lack of education
Hasn't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall

Kodachrome
You give us those nice bright colors
You give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah!
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away

If you took all the girls I knew
When I was single
And brought them all together for one night
I know they'd never match
My sweet imagination
And everything looks worse in black and white

Kodachrome
You give us those nice bright colors
You give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah!
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away

Mama, don't take my Kodachrome away


Written by Paul Simon

Subject: RE: BS: Nostalgia needs a picture
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Nov 09 - 08:24 PM

John, I think it was while you were *tenting* when we had an Obit thread for Kodachrome. It is a sad state of affairs...just that one little shop...amazing. Thanks for posting it.

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Nostalgia needs a picture
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 28 Nov 09 - 11:54 PM

The obit thread was a little before we hit the tent, but was during the "evacuation phase" while I was trying to move 5,000 square feet of house+garage+garden sheds into the rental storage sheds. While I tried to check in and catch up periodically during that phase - until the phone/DSL disconnect on 1 July - I guess I missed that one.

Although I tried a few rolls of Kodachrome, most of my film shots were with other films. I note that the article cites Kodachrome as "holding the color" quite well, and perhaps I should have used it more, as my few remaining slides (mostly from the mid '60s) are pretty much "dirty smudges" now. Negatives have generally faded badly. Prints made over the years have nearly all been scanned to digital, and the prints shredded to get rid of the mildew - and to recover storage space.

A few old negatives that I've had reprinted don't equal the color quality of the original (aged) old prints. Apparently the negatives fade faster than the prints. and the individual colors fade at different rates. Digital color correction/restore works miracles (if you ignore the "automatic" corrections built into the programs) or a lot of the prints wouldn't have been worth saving.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Nostalgia needs a picture
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 14 Jul 10 - 10:11 PM

Published 14 July 2010, in the Wichita Eagle, p 2C.

Undated from the Parsons Sun (Parsons Kansas) with reference to events "Monday," presumed to be 12 July 2010. A bit long, but may not be picked up widely, and the Eagle has no useful website.

[quote]

Last Kodachrome roll processed in Parsons
BY COLLEEN SURRIOGE
Parsons Sun

PARSONS — Freelance photojournalist Steve McCurry, whose work has graced the pages of National Geographic, laid 36 slides representing the last frames of Kodachrome film on the light board sitting on a counter in Dwayne's Photo Service in Parsons.

He placed a loupe — a magnifier that makes it easier to view film — over one frame and took a closer look at the film.

McCurry told Dwayne's vice president Grant Steinle how he had chosen to shoot the last roll of Kodachrome produced by Eastman Kodak by capturing images around New York. "Then we went to India, where I photographed a tribe that is actually on the verge of extinction. It's actually disappearing, the same way as Kodachrome," he told Steinle.

Kodak announced last year that it would retire Kodachrome, a brand name of color reversal film it had manufactured since 1935. McCurry, well-known for his 1984 photograph of Sharbat Gula, or the "Afghan Girl," published on the cover of National Geographic magazine, requested from Kodak to shoot the last roll of 36 frames it manufactured.

National Geographic has closely documented the journey of the final roll of Kodachrome manufactured, down to its being processed. Dwayne's is the only photo lab left in the world to handle Kodachrome processing, so National Geographic Television producer Yvonne Russo and National Geographic magazine senior video producer Hans Weise found themselves in Parsons on Monday, along with McCurry, with the final roll of the iconic film of the 20th century.

As a professional freelance photographer, McCurry has used Kodachrome film for 35 years. "It's definitely the end of an era," he said of Kodachrome. "It has such a wonderful color palette . . . a poetic look, not particularly garish or cartoonish, but wonderful, true colors that were vibrant, but true to what you were shooting."

There are definite advantages to digital photography by comparison to film, McCurry said. Regardless, digital photography is simply not the same. "I like having something to hold in my hand," McCurry said.

For McCurry, a photographer since 1974 and photojournalist for National Geographic for 30 years, Kodachrome has been a part of his professional career.

Russo said they documented McCurry shooting the final roll of film in New York, then traveling to Bombay and Rajasthan, India, then back to New York, shooting along the way several personalities of the world of filmmaking.

McCurry said he spent about two months shooting the images, which also included scenic photos, as well as serendipitous moments on the streets of New York. "And I actually shot the last three frames here in Parsons," McCurry said.

As Kodachrome is no longer manufactured, Steinle said that on Dec. 10 Dwayne's Photo will end its processing of Kodachrome.

"All this is going to be discarded," McCurry said of the processing equipment for Kodachrome, " . . . so it's just a piece of history. It's nostalgic.

It's kind of sad. I have about 800,000 Kodachrome images in my lab and these will be the last."

If National Geographic does a spread on the journey of this final roll of Kodachrome, McCurry said it will likely come out in spring 2011 and will consist of only four to six images selected from the roll. However, Weise said, "The entire 36 frames shot will be sent to the Eastman House in Rochester, New York, where Kodak is based, and live there."

[end quote]

John