They really do move on.

As drive costs have come down and capacity gone up, I thought I would try to recover old shoots from DVDs (and then, one day, toss them).

Why DVDs?

As many my age know, the computer purchased for the ages some ages ago has been long gone or long crashed, and the optical disks, so carefully written to and labeled have indeed become a part of the record of what we did.

* * *

Model-photographer culture, which is what I’ve called the phenomenon that has been mixing guys with cameras (GWCs), sometime gals, with at least modestly exhibitionist ladies (and guys) since the earliest of digitally communicating days had seen boom days at http://www.models.com — I sure did a lot of wild stupid-clever writing around that venue — and http://www.modelmayhem.com (I think I need to reappear there).

Another favored term of mine from that era: “faux fashion photography”.

What was I thinking?

What was she (or he) thinking?

Should I caption these old pictures? — “Mother of Three, Westchester”?; “Copywriter, Los Angeles”?; “Actor and Comedian, San Francisco”?

I can see if I’m not careful writing here, I’m going to catch a bad case of Valley Voice (?).

* * *

Do you believe in magic?

Some of these cats are makin’ it!

I could not be more gratified!

Sooner or later, especially as I post from these (model-released) archives, someone’s going to recognize someone (or himself).

Should I get in touch?

* * *

And some are less easily found.

A common name within an ethnicity; few details, even about interests, left from the shoot: and they are gone, Out There.

If your screen is hot, you might see artifacts.

Although some work on the DVDs travels back to the Nikon D70 era, others persist elsewhere in 35mm transparency files: those may have been scanned on equipment primitive compared to the Coolscan 5000 ED, which is itself now a bit behind the age, but it will have to do for a while longer.

Perhaps I should dive right into those old slide files, choose a very select few per age or set, and see how they look 10, 20, or 30 (or 40) years after I sat or stood somewhere and pressed a shutter release.