Fuel for "The Project"...

[Locut0s]

Last edited Tue Jun 25, 2013, 09:14 PM - Edit history (1)

So I just picked up a cheap flatbed scanner today, a Canon LiDE 210, to work on "The Project".

I've mentioned this briefly before but my grandfather is 94 with terminal cancer. He's been fighting one form of cancer or another for a long time now though so while we don't expect him to live a long time he's almost entered a sort of terminal equilibrium of sorts. He's had some really rough periods but has remained amazingly stable these past couple of years. Where I mentioned this was in talking about people who tell stories that go on and on and on. You can see my description of him in that thread here. To put it mildly he's one of those grandpa's. Get him started and he will speak for HOURS. As others said in that thread I should try to record these stories of his before they are gone. As a family we actually have tried to do that on more than one occasion with limited success. There are a few hours of tapes lying around the house here somewhere. A small fraction of the stories he tells.

Anyway this isn't directly related to that. Instead I've had my own family project going for about a year now. My project is to digitize the whole families' rather large photo and slide collection. To date I have 400+ slides scanned all from said grandfathers' collection. Many of these are from when he was younger, photos of his travels, photos of my now diseased grandmother, and much much more. Quite an interesting historical mix. Well the 2nd part of the project is to scan all of the developed photos we have scattered across countless albums, and families. I'd scan the negatives but most of them are long lost or god knows where. So enters the scanner I picked up today. That will be used to start scanning away at this pile:



Yup, each of those is a rather large photo album, so this is going to take a while. And after that I have no doubt that other photos will surface. I'm also placing ALL of these images on Flickr. Now that they give you a TB of storage that shouldn't be any problem, I'll keep the uncompressed 600dpi images on my HD of course.

The idea is to send out links to the whole family at large and have them all comment and tag photos so we can build up some context for all of them. Most of these have no date attached to them. And cloud sourcing this to the family is definitely the way to go, otherwise it would take YEARS to finish.

Anyway this should give me something to do with my time while I try to sort out my emotional issues at least.

Has anyone else done similar projects? I know many exist out there.

[Tobin S.]

1. Kick

[HeiressofBickworth]

2. I've been doing genealaogy research for many years.

While I understand your desire to scan/store photos and pass them around for further identification, I have one request: PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, do not destroy the originals. Technology changes, companies hosting your photos may go out of business, your computer and it's hard drive could destroy anything you have stored. Any one of these events could render your pictures unavailable.

While it is true that photos may fade over time, there are ways of preserving them for the long term (think hundreds of years). I went to a seminar many years ago on the archival storage of photographs. The method recommended at that time was to take pictures of all the pictures and store the negatives, each strip in a photo sleeve, and have them commercially deep frozen. This may be a drastic solution, but for family purposes, you can find safe ways of storing them for the future. The sticky pages which were popular a number of years ago can damage photos over time. Putting them in albums of acid and lignin-free papers will help. Storing slides in an acid and lignin-free environment will help preserve them. I have slides my father took when he was in college in the 30's and they are in good shape.

Good luck with your project -- it should prove to be an interesting walk through your family history.

[Locut0s]

3. Oh god no. I'd never destroy the originals...

Last edited Wed Jun 26, 2013, 03:07 AM - Edit history (1)

In fact I'd be scanning the negatives instead of the prints if I could but those are likely lost / destroyed. So this is still better than nothing. Also I'm scanning them in at 600 dpi and saving them in uncompressed TIF format on my hard drive which is in a RAID backup. This is high quality enough to make an 8 x 10 blow up of any of them if need be. Of course what I'm uploading will be 40% this size and lightly compressed JPEGS but still respectable. It's hard to say what will happen to the originals over time, but with luck they will be well preserved. Right now they ARE in those sticky albums you mention. I don't really have say over what will happen to them long term.

There will probably be thousands and thousands of photos in this collection when all is said and done. Right now the number that are TRULY precious is very very small, in the 50-100 range probably. Most of them are photos of family vacations and get togethers of which there are hundreds and hundreds. But of course over time no one can say what people will look back on and really cherish and in time, 50+ years they will probably ALL look special.

One added benefit of having them online is we can work together as a family to sort and catalogue all the photos. And once digitized they can be linked to other resources and used in many other ways.

Thank you very much for the concern though.

[Locut0s]

4. I'm even scanning in old letters and other odds and ends...

I won't necessarily post these as they may be personal but archiving it all is the goal.

[Locut0s]

6. And you are right those sticky albums are a nightmare...

After 20- 40+ years those photos are glued into these albums and taking them out takes the back off a lot of them and curls them up a bit. Luckily they are still fine for scanning and the front of the pictures are not damaged.

[Locut0s]

5. Just passing the 1500 photo mark now...

I already had a bunch of slides scanned.

I've also sent out a tutorial so hopefully the family, especially my Grandfather, can start commenting and tagging these.

I learned today that a great aunt may have some precious albums. BUT I also learned she may have thrown a lot out in a fit of spite! She's had a lot of anger issues. That would be HORRIBLE !