ever want every photo you own scanned/digitized? this is good stuff

This morning I took a great class with Jean (11am@ISHTA). I sweated profusely, which felt so good. I wish more classes got me moving that way (a la ashtanga in sri lanka).

I’m excited about a number of things. There’s transition of sorts coming, and part of the preparation for that has been going through my stuff, which for me is mostly photos in various formats. Now that I’ve gone through 100CDs of photos and edited them down to 7DVDs, and started to go through my Sri Lanka pics, I’m ready to tackle the negs & chromes that go back to 1988. This was inspired by Ilona and Narimantas. When we reconnected on assbook, I realized I had pics I wanted to share with them from 1995. Ilona posted some of hers, so I found mine and scanned about 20 on an office copier (they look reasonable on a PC but way blown out on a Mac), and posted them to assbook and flickr. Because I’m picky about quality and because there are so many beloved photos I simply don’t have time to scan but would love to have digitalized, I did a little research.

Wow! I found scancafe and scan my photos, the latter reviewed in the NYT by David Pogue, their tech guy. While the thought of sending my negs off to Bangalore, India (scancafe) is a bit hard on the nerves, they’re actually sent via UPS to California, packed in a container with other orders, tracked and tracked again, then sent to India. For $.29 an image, it’s worth it. Taking them to a lab here would be at least $1 an image, if not $2–without correction, which scancafe claims to do for each image. That is tedious. I hope their people in Bangalore are photog lovers and well paid (for Bangalore). I’m going with scancafe because scanmyphotos, in the USA, looks like it’s more for people with old family prints they want scanned. Pogue recommends them highly and there are examples up on the site, but the quality is pretty bad. He’s a tech guy, not a photog. Some people aren’t picky and just want their snaps digitized. Scancafe looks a bit more professional, and their neg and chrome fees are much better. Wow. I started preparing them this afternoon. All the boxes in the pic above are full of negatives and slides (the bag of rice is used as a yoga sandbag, if you’re curious). I went through them a few years ago and got rid of about 40%. Now I’m not editing. I’ll send them all eventually. I think I’ll send 2574 images in the first batch (You can choose and pay for only the ones you want, after they’re scanned, 50% minimum). That will take me up to April 2000. Wow. If you were tired of my uploads before!

I’m also excited about Moo Cards. Yes, more paying people to do things I don’t have time to do myself. And because I don’t scan or print anymore, it would take me forever to do it myself anyway. Far, far more than the cost of these services. Moo Cards are business, personal, and greeting cards you design yourself online and they print. You can have up to 100 of your own images on the cards. The mini cards start at $19.99. And they are beautiful. I can’t wait. My business card is from my photog days because I haven’t had time to make new. Weird to give to my yoga students, but I’ve never had time to design and print new cards, and am too stubborn to have something generic. Found Moo in Tara Hunt’s book The Whuffie Factor, which has been great for stuff like this. (I also learned about the coworking movement here, which is an excellent option for freelancers who go stir crazy working from home. I’ll write more about it later.)

I’m getting a headache because my music is on louder than I’d like. I’m trying to drown out my retired-pharmacist neighbor who is hacking away at his violin, which he took up upon retirement and has only gotten worse over the years I’ve lived here. He’s been going for hours on end today. The screeching is unbearable. Ann inspired me with her (new!) blog to put on some dancing shoes and clean/dance to some tunes, CLONK CLONK CLONK. He stopped—for two hours. He’d been going from 2-4:30, then started again at 6 and I just couldn’t take it. Got some cleaning done at least. And dancing. What’s better than that?

Well, dancing at Nini’s birthday party would have been, but the headache might also be the cold I only partially sweated off this morning in class. I’m feeling okay, but would love to avoid full fledged sick if at all possible. Alas, a little blogging, a little dancing at home will have to do. xoA