Both my dad and his father were big fans of slides. In our closet, we had about a dozen slide carousels, all full of images I’d never seen. They were a combination of trips my parents took when I was a child, and trips my dad’s family took when he and his siblings were children. I imagine that at some point my parents would have shared their vacation pictures with friends, but after that into the closet they went, part and parcel, for like 30 years.
I scanned them all recently and was delighted to find pictures of our family trip to Hawaii when I was 4. I don’t think I’d ever seen these photos, but I have vivid memories of the trip. There are no pictures of my dad, because he was always behind the camera, but some great ones of my mom and I. There were also photos from my parents’ trips to Acapulco, the Grand Canyon, and Tennessee. And some wonderful pictures of my aunt and uncle on various family vacations.
I was also enamored of slide film when I was taking photography classes. The film is not very forgiving, so you really have to get the settings right for proper exposure. But the quality of light they capture is like nothing else.
