As if the appearance of a brace of morning vultures weren’t enough to set off my day, my not-so-perfect Epson Perfection scanner was going AWOL. As I scanned old b&w negatives, it refused to scan certain images, it either chopped them up, or cropped half-frames, or scanned them too dark. I was too tight to buy the Cadillac model and now it's payback time. Now, these negatives were perfectly good images. Not overexposed or underexposed. No excuses.
First, the scanner chopped off my head, and then it nibbled the top off a man’s head. He had really nice hair. Then in the next image, it whacked off the entire top of his head. Wow. My scanner is either possessed or taking instructions from Dr. Frankenstein. The guy with the nice hair didn’t deserve that. He was someone whom I vaguely knew, someone who once took my photo a long time ago. And I took his. A mutual snapfest. It was a bit of synchronicity at work. Our photos were placed next to each other in a portrait exhibit at the Falkirk Center. 
I deliberated what to do with the Epson scanner, aside from drop-kicking it out the window. I reset everything, no luck. Repeat. Still no luck. I went through every setting and function. I even reinstalled the software. The demented auto-trim button was stuck on the on position, and greyed out.
The scanner kept chopping up my negatives like Mad Sweeney Todd—it chopped off Carolyn Forché‘s hands, it chopped off Carolyn Kizer’s nose, and Michael McClure‘s entire body from the neck down. I couldn’t even get Kenneth Rexroth‘s face to appear. It ghosted on me. I tried everything I could think of—from drawing on the edges of the negatives with Sharpies, a no-no, to masking them out with tape, but nothing worked.
To be fair, I often shot low light images in chiaroscuro mode—I like intense black and white photos. Especially when I’m shooting in poet mode. Maybe my scanner is stealing small pieces of their souls and is planning an ad hoc poetry assemblage TBA. The scanner is demented. My friend Miceál suggest ordering an online exorcist session.
Then I discovered that if I chose the normal “no thumbnail” option on the preview marquee, I could scan the entire strip of negatives. Not the best solution as the negatives were now out of focus. But apparently switching from marquee to film strip resolved the head-on-the-chopping-block problem. Not exactly practical, but it works. It also reset the auto trim button. Lo, as I flipped the Epson setting back to marquee mode, so I could make separate prints again, the negatives appeared in their dusty glory.
Back to that guy with the great hair. Luckily I had written his first name on the proof sheet, but that’s all I wrote. What was I thinking? I can’t even remember people‘s last names. Except for Chester Arnold’s name, who was also there, but he has two first names in a row. He also entered so many pieces, he stole the show. Then I noticed I had taken a photo of the guy in question holding up a check. He had sold one of his photos and there was his name right on the check, Jay Daniel. Cool!
You know that I had to look him up on Facebook. And damned if I didn’t find him, as we had many friends in common: Mark Adler, Andy Giddings. Who is this guy? Then I discovered I went to high school with him. Oops. Oh dear. Ok, you gotta admit it’s been a very long time since 1985. Or 1970. A lot of water under that bridge. So naturally I befriended him. He probably doesn’t even remember me either. But you gotta admit Facebook works in mysterious ways. So does my scanner. Apparently.
I can limp along with my Epson imPerfection v.550 scanner to scan the rest of the news stories—my big Covid project. But I’m afraid the poet archives will just have to wait for a better scanner as it’s also not the sharpest lens in the toolbox. I will need to rescan the images I want to keep. Perhaps it’s time for a GoFundMe?
All these photos should have the same greyscale value. There is no reason why my scanner did this. None.
No comments:
Post a Comment