He took old-fashioned slides, thousands and thousands of tiny transparencies from trips to England, to Central Europe, to Greece, Scandinavia, Israel, Alaska.

On each journey, he took hundreds of rolls of film. Before heading to the airport, he packed them carefully in lead bags.

Back home, he stored the slides, each carefully captioned, in metal file boxes. Organized by trip, they could turn a humdrum evening into a Technicolor travelogue.

Jim Wight died a few months ago of complications from a stroke. He was 90.

James Clayton Wight was born in San Diego. He graduated in 1940 from the University of California-Berkeley with a degree in electronics engineering. With war brewing, Wight was soon snapped up by General Electric and put to work designing and creating radar systems for the military.

Work took him to the East Coast, where he met his wife, Yvonne, then back west again. In 1999, when they were in their 80s, they followed their daughter to North Carolina.

As a teenager, Wight had gotten interested in photography. He didn't take lessons until he registered for an adult class taught in the San Fernando Valley by a renowned high school and college teacher. He enrolled in the beginner session, moved to intermediate, then on to advanced. Then he did it all over again, many times in a row, taking the same class for more than 20 years.

His wife eventually joined him, and photography became a shared passion.

"I got tired of waiting around while he took pictures," Yvonne Wight said.

On their trips, they liked to venture off the popular tourist path. Not that they didn't appreciate the loveliness of Yosemite's much-visited Bridal Veil Falls, but they also saw exciting photographic possibilities in Tioga Pass, the high country, flowing with waterfalls and streams and open only certain months.

They would travel by themselves, but in 1978, they also began touring the world with their teacher, H. Warren King, and classmates.

Jim and Yvonne Wright had identical cameras so they could use interchangeable lenses. He would snap on a wide angle while she chose a telephoto.

King's trips weren't sightseeing, sit-back-and-relax jaunts. There were assignments, such as a scavenger hunt one year in London. Participants got a list of objects they were supposed to photograph in each locale, and rarely were they obvious tourist sites.

The Wights were up to the challenge.

"I think they won that one and won a free trip to Europe," King said.

With the analytical mind of an engineer, Wight was skilled at figuring out lighting, exposure and composition. He took copious notes during class when other students just sat and listened.

His note-taking spilled over to the field, where he wrote a caption for each photo he took.

When they returned home, they would put together slide shows. Yvonne Wight developed precise commentary to go with each frame. Often, music they had collected on their journey accompanied the slides. Once a month, they would sit down together to watch their handiwork.

They also screened the slide shows for church groups and other community organizations and, of course, for their photography class.

Together, the Wights would enlarge prints of their slides, mount and frame them. Twenty of their favorites hang in their home. They entered others in exhibitions and competitions, donated some, gave some to friends.

In 1997, the Wights celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in Grand Teton National Park with their three children and their families. For once, Jim Wight was on the other end of the lens when one of his children arranged for a professional photographer to take family photos.

The Wights' travels ended after that. Jim Wight was no longer able to walk long distances.

With her husband gone, it falls to Yvonne Wight to figure out what to do with the pictorial history of their lives. It has been five years since she last saw one of their slide shows; Jim Wight moved to an assisted living facility in 2003.

Maybe, she mused, she might start by going through the collection, matching slides with trip itineraries they saved. She will take the liberty of marking for the circular file the slides of airplane wings or other errata.

"Jim never threw away a slide," she said.

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Jim Wight is survived by his wife, Yvonne, three children, six grandchildren and a great-grandson.