Photos

This set of pages collects the photos that are scattered through the Wanderjahr journal pages.

2018 update

In 1996-1998, I manually scanned some of the prints of the photos I had taken, and then (as described below) ran various image-enhancement tools on them. The resulting digital images, to my 2018 eye, were low-resolution and too-small in pixel dimensions and too dark. Sometime in the past couple years, I had all the prints re-scanned by a professional scanning service, resulting in much better digital images, so I've gone through the whole journal and replaced the old images with newer versions, and added a couple dozen images that I hadn't previously included.

The only downside to that change is that, as described below, I had significantly boosted color saturation on many of the old images, and I generally like higher-saturation images. I thought about doing some photo editing on the new images, cropping and enhancing in various ways, but that seemed like a lot of work (there are nearly 100 images in the journal now), so I didn't bother. So that means that some of the new images are less saturated than some of the old images—but even so, I think the new images are better in most ways.

Below is the original text of this page, preserved for historical purposes. (And because I liked the “dithering” joke.)

1998 original text

Here are the best of the pictures I took on the trip. I should note that I've been regularly disappointed that the colors that show up on film aren't as vivid as those in real life; and scanning the photos in reduced clarity and saturation even further. So I used some image-enhancement tools on these: a boost to contrast here, an increase in saturation there, cropping and resizing, and the occasional sharpen or remove-dust filter. The result, I hope, is something like what fiction is supposed to do: give the idea of the real by means of the unreal. (Though there's still way too much dithering. But then, I do way too much dithering, so there it is.) I'd welcome comments from people who know what they're doing with photo tools, on how better to achieve good-looking effects.

The photo pages

For each image, click the thumbnail to download the full (JPEG-format) image. The images are sorted into general categories (and chronologically within each category):

  • Animals: Felines and avians.
  • Artifacts: Human-made or human-reconstructed objects, most of 'em big.
  • Buildings: Buildings and parts of buildings, mostly cathedrals.
  • Glass: Stained glass in a variety of styles, many of them blurry.
  • Jed: A few photos of me.
  • Scenery: Rocks, mountains, skies, and such.
  • Signs: A couple of amusing signs.
  • Trees: With and without leaves.

That's probably about a sixth of the pictures I took, and most of the best ones. The one major category that's missing is people; mostly due to vague ideas about privacy protection, I haven't posted any of the people photos I took. If I visited you and you want me to put up a photo of you, let me know...

(Last updated: 4 June 1998.)