Curator/artist James McDaniel has developed an unusual window into the past via his curated collection of prints from unwanted vintage negatives, which will be on exhibit at Omega Photo for the month of September. He will be available to greet attendees of the exhibit and answer questions from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.

The exhibit is titled “(UN)disposed,” a word play on the saving of the unwanted thrown away film and captures candid moments of various amateur photographers from as early at 1910 to the ’50s.

Some pictures are a captured moment in time like a shot of a wooden boat and family members at a dock. One set of prints is mini documentary time capsule like the series of one set of negatives which has picture that could be an advertisement for the currently popular movie, The Help. The series shows a woman with a child in the kitchen, another with her holding the child, and later the same woman cooking at wood burning stove.  The sequence becomes a visual short story with the viewer to fill in the blanks.

What is remarkable, McDaniel says, is the quality of many of the photos revealing the visual talent of the amateur photographer whose photo never saw the light of day until now.

The germination for this project began when McDaniel went looking for a coffee percolator at a vintage store and spontaneously ended up buying an old camera with undeveloped film in it. His curiosity led him to develop the film. It wasn’t long before he had developed a collection of pictures and had a publisher who wanted him to make a book from his project. The book project is in the works, as is a Facebook page with some of the pictures.

A former program manager and video game producer at Microsoft, he left to explore new frontiers such as the official on-air “gadget guru” for radio station 107.7 The End before undergoing this latest project.

McDaniel, a former computer programmer at Microsoft, said that even though he is very analytical, he was known for his ability to be a bridge.

“I was always the guy who understood enough about everything to communicate between people – a jack of all trades bridging all the little bits and pieces of information while synthesizing it all into a whole,” McDaniel said.

Now he is a bridge between the past and the present, bringing to light history via a personal and intimate perspective while giving voice to the never before seen artist photographers of everyday life.