American Road Trip 1979 on Kodachrome

#USA04-11 Calico ghost town, CA, 05 May 1979. Exposed for the shadows.

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Around 1990 Britain's Channel Four broadcast Road Dreams, a series documenting Elliott Bristow's 500,000 mile journey around USA between 1968 and 1982.
Shot on Super 8, these films capture an America long-vanished, yet still within memory. Highly recommended, several full episodes are available on YouTube.

Chris
 
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Timmyjoe said:
Wow, these are fantastic Lynn. I grew up in the mid-west and me and my buddies did a cross country road trip to California in '76 when we were in our late teens, shooting Kodachrome. Boy, your pics bring back memories. Thanks for sharing.

Best,
-Tim
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Thanks Tim, it's good to hear these pictures have brought back a few happy memories of those times 🙂
 
ChrisPlatt said:
Around 1990 Britain's Channel Four broadcast Road Dreams, a series documenting Elliott Bristow's 500,000 mile journey around USA between 1968 an 1982.
Shot on Super 8 film these videos capture a long vanished America still within memory. Highly recommended, several full episodes are available on YouTube.

Chris
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Thanks for the heads up Chris, I'll have a look for it.
 
@lynnb I'm going to assume you labeled all of your slides with dates and places, otherwise it would have been difficult in the least to post about them all here. That's so cool.

If you bought 60 rolls of Kodachrome with 36 exposures and used them all, you shot 2160 images?? That's just nuts! Do you recall how much space 60 rolls consumed in your baggage? My best film effort was one roll per day on a 10 day trip.
 
#USA04-20 on interstate 15 heading towards Las Vegas 05 May 1979.
The interstate was quite a revelation to me - in 1979 the interstate roads in Australia were 2-lane, and some had only recently been sealed. The Nullabor highway (longest straight section of road in the world) across the desert in the Great Australia Bight - connecting Adelaide with Perth in Western Australia - had only been sealed in 1976. Before that it was bulldust, corrugated (from heavy vehicles) very fine red dirt, with lots of potholes.

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Archiver said:
@lynnb I'm going to assume you labeled all of your slides with dates and places, otherwise it would have been difficult in the least to post about them all here. That's so cool.

If you bought 60 rolls of Kodachrome with 36 exposures and used them all, you shot 2160 images?? That's just nuts! Do you recall how much space 60 rolls consumed in your baggage? My best film effort was one roll per day on a 10 day trip.
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I kept a detailed daily diary including place names in sequence and travel notes as we drove, so I could label the slides later. The rolls were numbered in sequential order so matching the slides to the diary was easy. There's only a few where I didn't know exactly where they were taken, although I can usually work out where they were.

I shot 57 of the 60 rolls. I think it was 5 pouches of 12, or 6 pouches of 10 Kodak yellow film boxes. I traveled light otherwise, a few pairs of jeans, some t-shirts and a long sleeve shirt, and something warm (can't remember what but we might see in later slides). Hiking boots and normal shoes. I bought a sweatshirt at Mt Rushmore. I was in the US for 63 days so I was shooting 1 roll a day on average, but in places like the Grand Canyon I went through 7 rolls (and could have taken more lol).
 
#USA04-23 The Strip, Las Vegas, 05 May 1979
In-camera hand held multiple exposure, Kodachrome 25. Nikon FE, Nikkor 50/1.4. Pano crop in LR6.
Walking along The Strip at night, I realised that photos of the signs would be surrounded by large areas of blackness, so it occurred to me to fill the frame with neon signs using multiple exposures. I seem to remember I used 1/30, exposing for the signs. This is the lower half of the frame, where the lights were most concentrated.

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lynnb said:
#USA04-25 the Strip, Las Vegas, 05 May 1979

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Gosh, we stayed at the Flamingo Hilton in 1988, nine years after you were there! Dad took a photo of this sign, and one of me nearby. I love these Vegas photos, especially the ones which have the names of the shows like the Village People at the Aladdin hotel. I almost feel honoured to be in the group of people to see these photos for the first time in 45 years.
 
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