It started with this photo

My mom and I are going through our family photos. We started in February and have already spent many hours at my dining room table with her carefully arranged family photo album. We are so lucky to have many photos of her side of the family dating back to the 1920's and even more lucky to be able to put names with these faces.

My great great grandparents on their 50th wedding anniversary.

As I remove the photos from the album pages, we look for dates, names, locations that are written on the backs of the prints. My grandma did a great job with naming everyone but the dates are not as easy to come by. So we're guessing and piecing together. "This looks like the same front porch. She is wearing the same dress in this photo too." I enjoy this sort of photographic detective work.

Then my mom fills in the details with memories and stories about personalities, traditions, mannerism and family dynamics.

My grandma and her parents. My great grandfather Otto took a lot of photos. We owe the first pages of our family photo album to him.

Next, I get to work on the laptop with Adobe Lightroom Classic, adding what information we have to the files we just created. Each photo is now an image file with the capability of carrying tidbits about dates, names, places and more. And the facial recognition and prediction that we are used to on our phones is available for these sepia toned images.

A search for great great grandpa August shows me 4 photos.

However, with the number of twins in my family it is still best to rely on grandma's handwriting when it is available. Or my mom's ability to remember that they would have Esther hold a handkerchief in her right hand while Hulda would hold it in her left. Or was it the other way around?

Our photos have stories to tell.

They may be from the 1920's or 2020's but I believe that someone, someday, will want to hear them.

If you have a photo project that you're planning to get to "some day", please get in touch with me soon. My summer is filling up with print and digital projects that are finally getting their some day.

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Faded Memories

Photos will fade. This is a fact.

One of the main causes of fading is UV exposure. Before digital, the process of making a photo print was based on light reactive chemicals and paper. Early photos used the best technology available at the time and most of the time the photos make it to the next generation and last for several after that. But not without losing some of the original detail, usually in the form of color accuracy.

I'm working on a set of photos from the 60's and 70's. Color photos from that era have usually lost a lot of their original color and taken on a color cast. The color cast is associated with old color prints and some people would not take that nostalgic look away. But if we want to restore an old image, the goal is always to regain the original look if possible. We want the grass to be green and the dresses to be yellow, just as they were on the bright spring day so many years ago.

Let's start your scanning project today! Contact me at amy@recollectphotomanager.com for individualized service and pricing for your photo collection.

"We found my grandparents' wedding album."

Have you experienced the curiosity that awakens when looking through a bunch of old family photos? The clothes, the cars, the vaguely familiar faces. I have a bit of a weakness for old photos. I get lost in them whether the faces are familiar or not.

I just finished scanning a wedding album for a family whose grandparents were married in 1957. The album itself is starting to crack and fall apart. But the photos inside are still in great condition. Each page is filled with a peek into that beautiful winter wedding 65 years ago.

Early black and white photographs will last a very, very long time. But they surely won't last forever. And they fade, just like color photos do. Add in the risk of damage from pests, moisture or disaster, it is hard to predict how long a printed photo will last.

This family is so lucky to have these photos and I am so happy that they hired to me to preserve them in a digital copy. They will have a high-resolution copy of each photo, the cover and the wedding invitation saved on a USB drive to be shared with the rest of the family. From there, we may make modern printed copies of the wedding album so that more family members can enjoy the photos or print a few to place in a special frame.

Let's get started on your photo projects soon!

email: amy@recollectphotomanager.com

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