Comments Posted by Tom Diaz

Thanks to everyone for the comments. I still like to shoot in infrared, because it can sometimes transform dull or flat lighting into something dramatic. In this case, the light in the afternoon, in the woolen-mill district of Lowell, Massachusetts, was already dramatic. Sometimes, IR can push scenes like that over the top, but in this case I thought it was an improvement.

TD

This got my vote as an outstanding picture of "the human condition":

Main Entry: human condition
Part of Speech: n
Definition: the positive and negative aspects of existence as a human being, esp. the inevitable events such as birth, childhood, adolescence, love, sex, reproduction, aging, and death

That's the dictionary definition, to which I would events like "meeting people."

It's a beautiful image that appears to be a candid encounter between two cultures.

Wish the toes were in there, but still, it's an arresting picture!

That's very flattering. You've made my day. Thank you.

Thanks very much for looking and commenting.

Thank you, Rob. The light was beautiful there this afternoon. You know how it is.

Hi, in case anyone is still looking, I did not notice the question from two years ago! The Sony UY-S90 is a high-speed scanner now available cheaply on ebay. (Sometimes.) It can scan a whole roll of uncut 35mm film in just a few minutes. There is also an attachment (which I also got on ebay) that takes a stack of mounted slides and scans them equally fast. It's a good thing to own if you have a lot of old negatives and slides to digitize. I also use it when I shoot film to give myself some fast preview-quality scans of the negatives.

And thanks also for your compliments on the photograph. I posted this and a few others for people who wanted to see examples of the UY-S90 output.

Thank you, Rafael, that is kind of you. I was walking near my cousin's house in Santiago de Cuba, and these children had just been let out for recess. They came running over to see the guy with the camera.