India: Negative scans a half year later!

When I renegotiated my work contract with WSC, from 12 months to 10 months, my goals were two-fold. One, I needed the time off in order to shoot and edit weddings. Two, I wanted time to devote to my personal projects- whether that is house stuff or photography work. I found myself sitting here on this drizzly 4th, pondering my "summer TO DO list", and was pleasantly surprised to realize that I am actually in a position to start really working with my India negatives. See, when I came back from India and had the color film processed at LB Wheatons, I asked for small (4x4) work prints to act as my "contact sheets". My intent was to choose negatives to scan after looking the work prints over. However, my scanner was acting odd with the actual negs, so instead I did quickie scans of the work prints. Yikes. It makes me cringe to think of it, but it was all I could do at the time. NOW I can take the time to scan certain negs individually and then work with them in Lightroom and Photoshop. In all, I will probably scan about 100 images, and follow that up with cleaning them of the dust, adjusting colors and levels, etc. The negatives, for some reason, seem to be very, ummm, irregular. I don't know how else to describe it- they have lots of "dirt" on them that isn't dust (see example series below for a before/after example from one). It's patchy cloudy stuff, and it is all over. If anyone has any ideas, I am listening. It took me several hours to scan and clean about 10 images. Eventually, I will have several of them printed. If not for a show of some sort, then at least for my house. I have to see these printed! BIG.

The initial scan...(above)The final image- cleaned up a bit!

I am pleased that between Photoshop and Lightroom, I can get what I want from the negs. I am just surprised by all the mess on them, seeing as they look ok on the light table and they didn't print that way from LB Wheatons. If it wasn't for my wanting to control all of the details to each image, I could simply have them printed by LBW "straight". But I don't want to do that. It makes me shiver to think of doing that and going back and forth over print pickyness (on my part) to have things re-done exactly the way I want.

This one (above) from Varanasi is definitely growing on me. It's interesting how my feelings about certain images will change over time. In a way, I am glad that it has taken me 6 months to get to this project.

The children behind the Taj haunt me. This little girl followed me (and probably every other tourist) as I walked along this barbed wire fence. She had asked for money earlier, when there were several children begging me for money. I gave them some, and one of the boys grabbed it and ran off, leaving the others to want MORE money. The begging was one of the most heart breaking AND annoying aspects to the trip. We were advised not to give money (and this was the only time that I did) because you can't help them, really, and you will continue to be inundated by demands.

I photographed lots of Dogs in India. They are all strays, people there don't have pets like we do. (Well, I did see 3 pet dogs, but that was over a span of 3 weeks, and multiple locations!) I imagine that they are all exhausted from simply existing. The dogs and cows eat garbage, so the good pickings are random for them.