My uncle was a professional photographer, and was also active in the boating/yachting culture in the 1970s. He would go on trips, take hundreds of photos, and develop them as slides. He had a slide projector and a big, white screen, and would occasionally invite friends & family over to his house for slide shows. He would spend a couple minutes describing each photo… the location, the circumstances, who was in it, etc.
I was six or seven years old at the time, and I loved it. The photos were so big and bright, and you felt as if you were there.
He died about 10 years ago. I have no idea what happened to all those wonderful slides.
I really miss those slide shows. And I am now curious if this is still a “thing.”
You can still get film and get it processed and made into slides, though finding a place that does it may take some work. I have not heard of anyone doing a similar viewing thing with digital photography and, say, PowerPoint. I have gathered 'round an iPad to see pics, though. The narrative has been neither as polished nor coherent as your uncle’s.
I am so glad to read you could enjoy some good presentations, I was subjected to some lousy ones. I still remember the beginning of them, then my attention and my consciousness slipped into slumber mode under cover of the dimmed lights. But there was potential for good pictures and good narrators, I am sure. Pity I got the other end of the spectrum.
I grew up in the 60s and also recall “slide shows,” with my dad running the projector. We didn’t have a screen, so he used the family room wall. I don’t remember being bored, but this was back when there were only three TV networks, so the entertainment bar was pretty low.
A place that I worked at 7 years ago had a projector mounted on the back wall of a conference room. I didn’t have any source of slides, but if I did, I would have been tempted to see if it still worked.
My Pop had all the pictures he took in the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s converted to slides. He had the Da-Lite folding screen. His projector used the Airequpit metal magazines instead of the carousel style. They were a pain in the Nutz. First you had to put the slide in this flimsy metal frame, then put the frame in the magazine, then the magazine fed on the side of the projector. Those metal frames bent easily and the projector jammed if you tried to change pictures too fast.
But the images on the screen were awesome. The ones from places like Mt Rushmore made you feel like you were looking at thr monument right outside your window.
I still have all his slides and equipment every couple of years my sibs and I look at them.
My uncle was real big into slide shows. He had several projectors and carousels filled with slides.
This past year he’s been digitizing them. He got his hands on a scanner that can scan multiple slides at a time and turn each one into a jpg. He’s been emailing these out to us as he gets them done. It sounds like he’s gotten tired of keeping the projectors in working order and finding a place to develop slides, especially since he takes photos with a digital camera nowadays.
Oh man! As a child in the 1970s in Pakistan, trips abroad were a rarity among people of our economic class. We had a couple of family friends who were apparently better off and would go on holidays to Europe, Australia, Canada/USA and the Far East. Then they would have dinner parties to show the slides. As a 5-12 year old I was dragged to those parties and as was the social convention at the time had to sit through those incredibly boring slide shows of a couple standing in front of various landmarks, or even worse, with people I didn’t know.
My parents took slide photos on our trips up to 2002 or thereabouts, and I remember them presenting slide shows for friends & family. They still have all the slides and the projection equipment in storage.
I think that the “vacation slide show” as a genre has largely been eclipsed by social media. These days, instead of looking at your friend’s slide show after they get back from a trip, you get to see each photo on Instagram or Facebook as it happens.
That being said, my parents don’t really use social media, so after I got back from a big trip to the US I did hook my computer up to their TV and show them my photos. I guess that’s the modern equivalent of the slide show, and with modern TVs you no longer need a projector to display a quality image.
My grandparents took hundreds of slide pictures between the 60’s and 80’s. I inherited them all, plus a Kodak carousel projector and about a dozen carousel wheels.
I digitized all the slides on my scanner, and they look fantastic. Not faded or anything, So now I have the projector and all these carousels I need to get rid of. The carousels sell for $5-10 each on eBay I think, but I have no desire to sell them piecemeal. I don’t know if the projector even works, as I just scanned the slides and didn’t bother using it.
But as a kid, I loved running that projector and watching all those slide shows. The alternative at the time was a small 20" TV with rabbit ears. Watching family slides was like going to a movie.
My family never had slides, but I remember this: in the last two years of my school days, we used to have birthday parties at our classmate’s, with probably 10-12 of us attending. Some rather strange guy thought that the height of entertainment at his party was to show us endless slides of his family vacations. It was the most boring party I’ve ever been to.
I did this a few years ago. Had amassed a library of about 1000 slides, dating from 1969 to my switch to digital in 2004. Having them all in digital format enabled me to clean up scratches, hairs, etc. I’m retired so the time investment was irrelevant. Enjoyed it immensely.
By the way, a friend has a DVD projector and screen; the projector can also connect via USB to my computer- instant slide show just like the old days.
Of course one can always connect the computer to the TeeVee for a smaller-screen slide show.
When I was a kid, my dad would show us slides from a circa 1940 slide projector (which I still own). I remember that if you left a slide in the projector too long, it would melt (no fan).
My mom lived with me during the last ten years of her life. Each year I came back from vacation with hundreds of slides. I had a Kodak Carousel projector and a large screen, and it was such a joy to show mom the places I had traveled to. She said this was the thing she most looked forward to.
Now that mom is gone, and everything is digital and the slide projector is collecting dust, I still return from a vacation and mentally show her where I’d been.
Same here. One family trip we were joined by one of my fathers work colleagues and his wife. When the slides came back my parents invited the couple for dinner and a slide show. My parents were non-smokers but back then (mid sixties) would let visitors smoke in the house. I was siting on the floor in front of the couch and behind me was a small table with a bowl of nuts, and an ashtray. The third or fourth time I reached back I reached into the ashtray by mistake and chomped down on a cigarette butt instead of a cashew. Being well behaved, I rushed out to the kitchen to spit it out in the sink instead of on the living room floor.
This OP could have been mine, but with a few changes. Uncle, Travel, 60’s, slides…
But I HATED it. So Second-Generation “Don’t give a fuck”, Presentation was drier than Wonder Bread in Death Valley. Look up Tedious in the Dictionary, and there was my Uncle.
He’s long dead, and so are his boring-ass slide shows. Never given them a second thought till I read this.
My dad took lots of pictures and got them made into slides which were put into carousels. Some of them might have been watched once but most of them were never watched ever. When he died there were a few dozen boxes of those things in his closet.
My stepmom gave them to my sister. At least he took the time to label the box so she could throw most of them in the trash without going through them because they were from a business trip of his in 1978 or something. She went through the ones of family and there were a few worth saving. Dad sucked at picture taking.
I did like slide shows if the pictures were good and the presenter did a good job. The few I recall seeing fit into that category.
