MAGIC!

It’s coming up to that time of year when the blog celebrates it’s third birthday.  I would like to take this opportunity to thank each and every one of you who read my posts and pages, cheers guys & gals!  It has also been good this last year to discover even more interesting blogs.  I have recently been doing more posts that are not nature or drag racing themed, so it’s been pleasing so many of you have ‘liked’ and commented on them.  We are sitting out the second big storm to hit us in a week but rest assured when spring gets here normal service will be resumed.

So for this post we go back to last November.  We thought we had sold our property, unfortunately it all fell through more or less at the last minute.  The only good thing to come out of it was we managed to declutter and clear out 30+ years of “oh that might come in handy one day”.  When I was up in the roof loft space I came across a box of old photos, a quick rummage through and I found two packs with ‘ drag racing’ written on them.  I could have cried with joy!  I thought these were lost for ever having searched for them before without success.

Two well known Comp Altereds line up. The big v8 powered Ford Pop ‘Liquidator’ driven by Tony Merry or Pete Goddard and the Jag engined ‘Paranoia’ of Loten and Thomas

Ah the memories!  Well to be honest I really can’t remember taking most of these pictures.  They date to the early 1980’s and some can be assigned to certain meetings by maybe the car/bike name or colour, those on the ‘UK & European drag racing photo’s’ fb page have been a great help.  I scanned them onto the computer, a couple of things were obvious, 1. My photography skills in those days was somewhat lacking and 2. Some of the old prints had suffered with age and turned red!  So I asked Uncle Google if anything could be done to restore the images “Yes” he said ” You need to download one of them expensive post-processing softwares”  Hmmm, a look through the options and here’s one offering 30 days free trial!  Well it would be rude not to.

Before and after, not a 100% but very acceptable. Ron Pudney’s ‘ Magician’ a 1968 Mercury Cougar

The magic button was fade correction and this could be altered for more or less reduction.  However the images still needed working on.  Full size on a 16″ laptop screen the 5″x 3.5″ prints were a bit grim.  They looked very ‘noisy’ possibly due to the type of paper so hit the ‘noise control’ button, better but now soft so saved the results and in Nikon View NX which I got with my first camera I cropped and sharpened the images also adding some contrast or highlight protection and straightened one or two.  Now things were looking good.

Now you see me, now you don’t! Hazze Fromme ‘Ragnarok’ nitro Funny Car

Further investigation into what this software could offer and with a bit of practice I could remove dust spots or scratches and even more impressive a photographer or two!  The images were now good enough to use on my blog in my various drag racing pages.  Some might say it’s cheating and yes it is but it is also a great way to preserve memories, plus I still have the original prints!

So did I purchase the software?  Actually no.  I made full use of the thirty day trial but at the moment all my post-pocessing needs can be taken care of in Nikon NXD.