You have to be about 15 or 16 to go out in the blizzard and get on the swings. (Schurz Park)
7/06/2006
Swinging Snowstorm
You have to be about 15 or 16 to go out in the blizzard and get on the swings. (Schurz Park)
Situation Negative
So - how do you file your negatives? In order to answer this you need to have at least 10,000 negatives. My own system is giving me headaches. I pull anything that is for sale (at least I usually do) - and put that 35mm strip in an sleeve. I label the sleeve with the title. I have little folders that I slip these strips into alphabetically, i.e. all the "A" title strips are in their own holder.
Everything else goes into boxes of 6 x 6 sheets by year. I know - right there I have a problem. What does the year really tell me when I'm looking for something? Also, sometimes there are two images on a strip - so I file those in a catchall folder called "More Than One Image"
Then there is another box that has things in it that I need to look at or scan. And still another box with Bronx shots. Another box with things I did for theater. Another box with shots from Paris... oh it goes on. But generally there's no rhyme or reason to what is on a particular roll of film. In other words, they put the words: Assignment on the holder but I don't have an assignment.
It may be that my system is fine and that I'm flawed. For example - yesterday I had an order for a print of "Steps of Met." This is an old neg. that has been filed away under "S" forever. But when I went to look for it this morning - it was missing. I could remember that it was in one of the older glassine type envelopes. The reason that I was looking for it was that I had never done a good scan of it. So now I'm stumped. I won't make a long story of it but eventually it was found in the "negatives to scan" box. Which in a way is where it should have been.
Well anyway - maybe you have some ideas that could help me as well as the rest of the miniscule number of people shooting film.
This is one area where I guess that digital capture has it all over film.
I'm off now to join my local Filing Anonymous.
Everything else goes into boxes of 6 x 6 sheets by year. I know - right there I have a problem. What does the year really tell me when I'm looking for something? Also, sometimes there are two images on a strip - so I file those in a catchall folder called "More Than One Image"
Then there is another box that has things in it that I need to look at or scan. And still another box with Bronx shots. Another box with things I did for theater. Another box with shots from Paris... oh it goes on. But generally there's no rhyme or reason to what is on a particular roll of film. In other words, they put the words: Assignment on the holder but I don't have an assignment.
It may be that my system is fine and that I'm flawed. For example - yesterday I had an order for a print of "Steps of Met." This is an old neg. that has been filed away under "S" forever. But when I went to look for it this morning - it was missing. I could remember that it was in one of the older glassine type envelopes. The reason that I was looking for it was that I had never done a good scan of it. So now I'm stumped. I won't make a long story of it but eventually it was found in the "negatives to scan" box. Which in a way is where it should have been.
Well anyway - maybe you have some ideas that could help me as well as the rest of the miniscule number of people shooting film.
This is one area where I guess that digital capture has it all over film.
I'm off now to join my local Filing Anonymous.
Reporter, FX
From my upcoming book, "Commuted Sentence" which will be available in very limited editions around the time the 2nd avenue subway is completed. When FX opened their studios I ran into this guy every morning for about a week. "Fee-gah-row, fee-gah-row!"
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