During the past week, FABI founding Director Prof. Mike Wingfield began the substantial task of sorting through his extensive 35mm slide archive housed at the Institute. This mammoth task includes many thousands (a guess is about 20 000) slides of photographs captured during the course of some 33 years. This was up to the point in 2003 when he began to capture images using a digital camera.  The task has just begun and would not be possible without the assistance of Morné Booij-Liewes.  This task is likely to take about 40 working hours prior to the process of digitizing the most valuable pictures.  “These slides are not only a valuable resource but also a ‘walk down memory lane’, sparking memories of many field trips, presentations or visits around the globe,” explains Mike. “While I have more subsequently photographed many of the fungi using a digital camera, the really valuable images, apart from those of unique pests and pathogens, are of people! FABI’s slide projector and a light table had already been taken out of storage and dusted-off in anticipation of their being used in this task.

Most of the younger FABIans are familiar only with digital cameras.  And they don’t realise that before this technology was readily available (or affordable), 35mm print or slide film was used. Presentations were also made using slide projectors prior to the availability and use of PowerPoint, which is now taken for granted.