The Ignorant Angler

There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,     And the rivers all run God knows where;  There are lives that are erring and aimless,     And deaths that just hang by a hair;  There are hardships that nobody reckons;     There are valleys unpeopled and still;  There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons,     And I want to go back—and I will. 

From The Spell of the Yukon by Robert Service.


In continuing with the recent slide scan theme, this is one of my all time favorite images.  Nothing fancy, but oh the memories!
Twenty years ago my wife and I hunted the interior of Alaska.  It was mid-September, and for all the world, could have been the middle of winter.  The previous group of hunters had endured summer like conditions and biting flies.  Conditions changed overnight.  The landscape, now stark, was cloaked under a deep mantle of snow.  We arrived in camp and were greeted by the outfitter and our native guides.  One, an Athabaskan kid, guiding his first hunt, the other, an elder Inupi…

There's just something about slides that can't, or at least in my opinion, hasn't been duplicated by digital cameras.  First, you can pick up a slide.  That's right, there's something tangible to hang onto.  Then you can drop it onto a light table, and voila!  It pops. More color.  More life. With slides, you know immediately.   Properly exposed?  In focus?  Either they're good, or garbage.   That said, the entire digital process is a hell of a lot simpler, more convenient too.  
I've had a Nikon slide scanner for years.  Unfortunately, many iterations of Mac software upgrades had rendered the Nikon software inoperable due to non compatibility.  After several years of non use,  my scanner is now functional. I purchased Vuescan driver software (www.hamrick.com) for my Nikon scanner. It's usable by most scanners and they continually upgrade the software to keep up with Mac and Windows.
I hit a minor glitch after the software download.  But, after a littl…