Vintage Wooden Boat: Paint, Tar, and Nostalgia in Receding Snow

Mr. Smith kept the boat together with paint and tar, apparently. The age of the small, wooden craft was undoubtedly near the end of life expectancy and I could’t help but find the nostalgia of years past in the scene that lay before me.

The image was originally made on film using a 35mm camera. I was never fussy about the type of film I shot, and enjoyed the different results that came from the many types that spooled across the camera’s pressure plate; I payed little attention to brand comparison wars.

The image was scanned on a cold cathode fluorescent type scanner and I distinctly remember – it was quite a few years ago – making multiple scans and editing them in software (Photoshop, I’m pretty certain). As is the case today, back then I was not up to speed with the program. The blended image consisted of a cut-out-and-paste of the snowdrift from an underexposed scan, and superimposed onto the frame of the overexposed scan — the overexposed scan being the main image scan with highlights blown out but the tonal values across the rest of the image satisfactory.

With the images combined in layers, I adjusted the snow - slightly hot for the setting sun - and the result was rewarding for all the work I put in transforming analogue film to digital capture. The other hot point was the buoy protruding up at the stern of the boat, and some slats on the lobster pot. You can see the underexposed cutout below. I simply registered it over the full image and adjusted accordingly. Quite the bit of fun, bringing this piece of film to digital life.