The web is always evolving, and it's no surprise that website content can undergo changes over time. This site gets additions or slight modifications for corrections, but rarely would content be removed or altered in any major way.

As I inch along in this digital preservation process, I can't help but think about the creation process at hand for a fresh new photographer in his newly opened Yokohama studio in 1892.

I've gone through the first digital capture test after making some needed improvements on the hardware side of the equation. I've purchased and modified an AirEquipt contact printer from the 1960's to act as the back-lit light table. The steel box that encloses the bulb is light-tight and accepts a top-mounted translucent pane of 1/16 inch Milk Glass to diffuse the constant-color CFL Daylight bulb I've swapped out for the heat producing incandescent it would normally use.

First things first. I'm not usually the guy that makes lists for most things I do, but this happens to be one of those times it will be beneficial, if for no other reason than the sheer number of items that need to be assessed and accounted for during the entire process. In comparing the slides I have to the one copy of Enami's catalog I currently have, it became apparent that there are a far greater number of slides listed than what's in my meager collection.

These are a few of the first images taken for public posting of the collection of lantern slides I purchased about 40 years ago. They have moved with me wherever I've been, and have rarely seen the light of day for more than a dozen or so occasions - and only for a few hours each time they were out.