Day Trippers
This reminiscent video is now available for FREE at Vimeo for viewing on laptops, tablets, and smartphones. You may view it here or for the best experience, get the Vimeo app:
Android – https://bit.ly/vimeo_android
iOS – https://bit.ly/vimeo_ios
I gratefully acknowledge the archive program at The State Library Victoria (http://www.slv.vic.gov.au).
There are nine themed vignettes of Black and White photographs from 60-120 years ago. The archive images are presented for 10 seconds each to allow time for engagement.
1. Sitting in rain forests
2. Boating on rivers
3. Picnics in the country
4. Cuddling koalas
5. Swimming in a waterhole or river
6. Feeding ducks and swans
7. Fishing
8. Camping in the bush, and caravaning.
9. Enjoying Botanical Gardens …
This image below is a link to one of the studies of a little Grebe that I filmed at the Mt Coot-tha Botanical Gardens in 2015.
Day Trippers was the last movie in my series of relaxing and reminiscent films for the Aged Care Industry. After seventeen years work I retired from this area of my arts practice in 2022. The movie was released in 2019 on DVD but I had started to wonder if that completion date would ever eventuate. The last of my videos for it had been completed two years earlier. The vignettes in my storyboard were coming together but the feasibility of getting enough models to complete the scenarios that I had scripted was daunting. I also had to accept that bush-land filming, trekking and lugging equipment was proving more of a challenge to me.
I must admit that I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw a promotion come through from the State Library of Victoria stating that they were allowing use of archived photographs that were in the Public Domain – I immediately followed the link 🙂 .
There was a lot of digital work that I had to do on the images to make them suitable for my film. Ensuring contrast and tonal values were easier to define especially for aged care clients with possible visual impairment. Besides the usual re-sizing to HDV with composition adjustments and numerous quality image corrections, there was digital repair work required. The archive photos had been scanned as large tiff images which allowed plenty of space for repositioning subjects and digital work.
I’m always grateful to my talented interdisciplinary-artist son Sam who is also brilliant at digital art and digital restoration. Many years ago he had taught me some of the techniques for photo-editing and restoration – I hope this student did OK.
They were just a few marks and damage on this photo of the lady fishing (above). So many of these old photos show the elaborate fashions for picnicking, boating, fishing etc. I simply loved this one.
Have a lovely weekend and thanks for popping by 🙂
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