Kodachrome scenes from Hong Kong - October 1950

Hi Everyone,

One of my usual Christmas holiday tasks is to review and discard papers and photographs from the household archives (excess stuff). This season, my wife and I did a major purging of my dad's thousands of Kodachrome slides from his many travels and living situations. He traveled and moved an amazing amount in the mid-20th century.

In 1950, he embarked on a major trip west from Guam back to USA. He had worked on Guam for an engineering company. The contract was over, and he returned to Massachusetts the long way, heading west. His slides show a world that has changed drastically. Here is Hong Kong with no skyscrapers!!

I scanned the slides with a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000ED, operated by Nikon Scan software on a WIN7 32-bit computer. I adjusted the colors with Photoshop. These are real pictures - no Ai. My dad used a Leica IIIC with 5cm ƒ/2 Summitar, which I still occasionally use.

Kodachrome was certainly a remarkably durable medium. The colors are not quite"right", but consider, these are 75 years old. I will save a tiny subset of his slides for my daughter.

Thanks for sharing.

The pictures are amazing! Whatever you do, don't throw any slides away.

loccdor said:

The pictures are amazing! Whatever you do, don't throw any slides away.

Click to expand...

Indeed, they're amazing and I wouldn't dare throwing anything away.

Anon Ymous said:

Indeed, they're amazing and I wouldn't dare throwing anything away.

Click to expand...

Thank you all. Unfortunately, I have to purge the excess because leaving papers and unorganized photographs to ones descendents is a miserable burden on them. I have discarded the pictures that have no obvious time setting. Who cares about a pretty sunset, trees, a mountain scene, a snapshot of the Taj Mahal? These could be taken today or 75 years ago. But I agree, it is painful to discard slides.

One day, I will start attacking my slides. Again, all the "pretty" pictures can go into the trash.

Great pics - a part of history now that needs to be preserved. I wasn't even UK school age then which was 5 so all those people who were in early adulthood are all dead now. A sobering thought

pentaxuser

Fantastic photos! Very important, I would say.

Love these

Kodachrome forever !

The airplane shot of Kowloon is so interesting.

Amazing, can you imaging we were here shooting these?

I'll drain all my batteries!

Thank you for sharing! Shows what we have lost in the demise of Kodachrome.

Wonderful shots. Reminds me of the old Charlie Chan movies I used to watch in the 1950s. A big favorite.

Besk said:

Thank you for sharing! Shows what we have lost in the demise of Kodachrome.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Kodachrome was spectacular. During the 1990s and early 2000s, there was a cottage industry of "photographers" who went on a hate Kodachrome tirade. It resembled the later tirade of early D adherents who claimed they did not hate anything in life as much as they hated film. Sigh.....

I may later post some of my dad's Cairo and Paris photos from 1950.

I deeply regret I never shot Kodachrome films. I started over film photography in 2008 and I wasn't aware of this jewelry.
I just happened to watch what was going on about Dwayne's photo store in Kansas and the countdown of the last developments. RIP.
Grrr.....