No Products in the Cart
If you are a modern retro photographer...let's shorten that to retrographer and see if we can force it upon an unwilling public...who chooses to work with colour images, you will make your choice between virtual colour transparency or virtual colour negative film.
You will research Kodak, Agfa, Ansco, Fujifilm, and other brands to find a look that reproduces the past, now. You might make your images in-camera or later in post production. But there they’ll eventually be - ready to show...
The person who effects to produce retro C prints in large sizes is well catered for by professional labs*, and would be wise to use their services. The person who wants to make postcard-sized prints can also use smaller commercial labs in camera stores or stationers, but could equally enjoy using a home printer for this.
But the person who really wants to stride the retro world like a colossus needs to have retro slide shows. They need a number of things:
a. A laptop computer of some sort.
b. A digital projector of some sort.
c. A screen on a tripod stand. Or a sheet tacked onto the
wall.
d. Some folding chairs. Not good ones, mind.
e. A hot night.
f. Plates of Vegemite on Sao biscuits and bottles of warm
beer.
g. Mosquitos.
h. Victims.
The ideal venue for this sort of classic show is a lounge room painted pale green with a decorative fluorescent light fixture in the ceiling.
The showman must have the images in multiples of 36. They must be in a 6 x 4 format and in every block of 36 there must be at least four duplicates. Equally, in every block one image needs to be upside down.
There must be a fair distribution of over and underexposure as well as one decent image per show.
It is critical that the presenter of the show talk continuously over the whirr of the projector so that excuses can be made for the duplicates and bad results. It’s customary to show three blocks of 36 in a row and then snap the lights on suddenly to allow the audience to go to the toilets. Lock the front and back door while the intermission is on...you don't want the embarrassment of escapees.
Show the second half of the slides when they come back. The beer should be nicely warm by then.
Classic themes for the slide night are:
Holiday in Fiji
The Wedding of Cousin Margery
At the beach in Avalon
Fun in the garden.
Test cricket from the stands.
Flower gardens of the Mallee.
The hardcore retrographer calls all round the town a week after the show and invites people for the next one.
*Fitzgerald Street is a good place to look.
Written by Richard Stein
