Monday Meanderings - 7.27.2015

I mentioned a few weeks back that I have been digitally scanning the packets of photo prints that we have accumulated over the years, with good intentions to put them in binders someday. You know what they say about good intentions. Toward the end of the print developing era the film processors began including CDs of the prints, so that really helped speed things along.

So, having finished the Walmart and Walgreen packets, I have turned to the 8 or 10 binder albums that do contain the earlier photographic history of this branch of the Anderson family. And once again, I encourage you - nay, strongly advise you - go get out your albums or shoe boxes or whatever and with a soft-lead pencil, or an archival ink pen made specifically for that purpose, put some dates and names on the backs of those pictures.

And, if your pictures are not in archival-quality sleeves and albums, your heirs will benefit greatly if you tend to that chore at once. A few years back we did take the Hodge-podge collection of albums and moved everything to photo-safe plastic sleeves in uniform binders.

Unfortunately, it was too late for many of the earliest photographs. Who knew, 50 years ago, that gluing prints onto craft paper, or worse, using the sticky page type albums was the kiss of death for pictures? So there is a stretch of time where pictures are marred, or large blobs are missing, or where ordinary glue has soaked through the backing.

Our earliest snapshots were in black and white, and measured a miniscule 3.3 inches square. The color prints that began showing up are faded, or the colors have shifted to pale oranges and greens. Many are out of focus, or fuzzy; I don't remember our first cameras, but they obviously weren't very good. Interestingly, there are a few Polaroid prints in the mix that have retained a clarity and sharpness of color that really stands out.

The time-consuming part of this project is physically removing the prints from the album pages, marking them so I can get them back in the albums correctly, carefully positioning them on the flat bed of the scanner so that they will be in the right sequence, then putting them back.

After scanning, I enter what few dates and notes that exist into the metadata of the digital images. Fortunately, my scanning software can identify up to 6 pictures in a single scan, but it is still a tedious project.

And that's a whole lot more about my scanning project than you wanted to know.