Feb
11
Fifteen years ago my Mom pulled out a big box of photos and super8 films that she had saved. There were photos spanning the lives of my parents and grandparents and super8 films that documented the first 9 years of my families life. My Mom and sat down and went through all of those old photos and she shared her family history, memories of her childhood, meeting my Dad and raising my Brother and Sister and I. It was a precious time capsule and a precious gift to be able to spend that time with my Mom to not only hear her stories but to see and feel her life through her eyes. I knew how important these memories where and I wanted to protect them. I know that Super8 films will eventually degrade and would be lost forever so I wanted to archive them as soon as possible as well as scanning every photo in that box to make sure they were archived and protected. Scanning such a large quantity of photos was going to take some time and I didn’t want to rush the process so I allowed one hour per day. It took a few weeks but eventually all of the images were archived. For the Super8 films and video, I found a reputable local lab and brought the film canisters and video cassettes in to be digitized and put on a DVD. (This was 15 years ago and DVD’s were cutting edge). A few months later, my entire family history had been digitized and preserved and I had DVD’s made for each family member. When my parents had their 50th wedding anniversary I created a book for them to celebrate the first 50 years of their life. I was able to recall all of my Mom and Dads stories, their journey from their first words to each other to their lives as grandparents. It was a labor of love made easier because I already had every family photo archived and ready to use.
I want to share a personal experience and why my decision to digitally archive all of my families memories was so important. On January 3rd, 2020 my Mom passed away after a two year bout with Cancer. For anyone who’s lost a parent or a spouse I don’t have to explain the gravity of that loss. We all pitched in with the funeral arrangements and because I am a photographer/videographer, it fell on me to take care of all of the media, large prints of my Mom and a short film that chronicled her life to be shown at the service. I had a week to complete everything; photo prep, retouching and printing in addition to creating and editing the short film. It was a gut wrenching emotional week and one of the hardest projects I’ve ever had to do but it was also cathartic to be able to spend that time honoring my beautiful Mom. The project would not have been possible if I didn’t have the forethought to digitize my family history. It would not have been possible if I didn’t have the amazing gift of sharing stories and family history with my Mom and Dad. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about my Mom, but I have an entire archive of precious memories at my fingertips and a film to watch when I need to feel and remember her.
One day, you may want to create a beautiful photo album for your family. And one day, those family members may no longer be with us but your memories, in photos and film, can last forever. It’s worth the time! So here are some tips to get you started in archiving your own family memories.
Scanning photos into digital files:
- Handle the images with care. If you have lint-free cloth gloves use them. If not, hold the images on the edges.
- Make sure the glass on your scanner is clean and dust free each time you start scanning for the day.
- Use a lint free fiber cloth to gently remove the dust from your photos before you place them on the scanner.
- Make sure you scan at the highest resolution (300dpi) which is a print quality file. One day you may want to reprint that image our use it in a digitally printed family photo album.
- If you don’t have a scanner or the time or energy to put into scanning a large quantity of photos then there are local business who specialize in exactly that.
Naming and organize your files:
Decide on how you’d like to organize and name the photos. One suggestion is to break them down and name them using the year, family members and event or location. Use either an “underscore” or “hyphen” to break up the words. Naming them this way will give you 3 or 4 key words to use when you search for a specific photo and make your life SO much easier.
1960_Kids_pool
1965_mom_dad_wedding
1984_mikes_first_car
- You can also separate your images into “albums” in iPhoto.
- If you don’t have iPhoto or a comparable windows photo program you can create folders directly in your files to organize them.
- If you’re using iPhoto, Adobe Bridge or Lightroom to organize and view your photos, use “keywords’ like – Mom, Dad, Kids, Vacation, Mexico, Wedding etc. when you upload your photos. This allows you to narrow your search and easily find images that you want to use in your projects.
Transferring your super8 movies or Video to digital files:
Unless you are an expert this is best left to the professionals.
A simple Google search: “transferring super8 to digital” will give you local businesses in your area that provide this service. Even if it’s slightly more expensive, I HIGHLY recommend that you do this locally and in person rather than shipping or mailing your precious original films to an online lab and risking them becoming lost or damaged in the process.
DVD players are almost as irrelevant as VCR’s so consider which format is best for you to be able to view and enjoy your movies. I recommend that you get your memories transferred first as simple digital MP4 files so you can store, view and if you are computer savvy, edit them on your computer. After that, If you and your family still have DVD players then you can get additional copies of playable DVD’s that you can show on your home TV.
Back up EVERYTHING. Hard drives fail eventually and when they do, so do all of your photos and hard work in archiving them. Back them up on at least two hard drives. If you have the time and resources, give an additional hard drive to another family member so it’s in a different location in case of fire.
I can tell you this from experience: This may seem like a daunting task but if you break it up over a few weeks or a month, you won’t feel that overwhelm and you will NEVER regret spending the time to protect those memories.
Jul
23
Today’s post is about inspiration. We all need it from time to time, especially if we’re in the business of creating art for a living. One of my favorite places to turn for that inspiration is in the past. History is a passion of mine. It’s not about dates or events; it’s about the people who lived at that time and how it must have felt to live through those pivotal events. They are people like you and I with the same depth of feeling and thought, struggling with different challenges but they struggled just as we do. They loved and laughed and saw their world changing as we see ours changing. I love the early 20th century photographers. This was a renaissance time for photography – there were no camera phones or Instagram. Cameras were big, bulky and every image had to be developed and printed by hand. If you wanted your images to be seen you had to hustle, submit your work by hand or mail and develop relationships with publishers. Honestly, I find inspiration in that kind of work ethic.
So, when I turn to history for inspiration, I tend to gravitate to the women photographers who blazed the trail in the early 1900’s. Women like Dorothea Lange whose iconic images of the great depression were printed in newspapers and magazines around the country and put a face to the hardship. Margaret Bourke-White traveled around the world and documented wars and the faces of not only the men who fought them, but also the leaders who shaped and influenced our culture and society. These were incredibly strong and courageous women who made their mark on a medium that was previously documented by men. They brought a unique perspective to their work; their sensitivity evoked such wonderful vulnerability and ease in their subjects. They were a powerful combination of compassion and strength and many of them created their art before they had the right to vote.
Today I want to honor Berenice Abbott. Berenice’s images documenting the rapid changes in New York in the 1920’s are fascinating! She was born in 1918 and as a young woman she moved to New York to study sculpture and later Paris and Berlin to continue her studies. It was in Paris that she discovered and mastered photography, first becoming an assistant at Man Ray Studio. She moved back to New York in 1929 and was struck by the rapid changes to the city. On the eve of the great depression she began her series of documentary photographs. These photos are a living history of that time and until the day she died she advocated for this style of documentary photography. She was truly one of the more influential photographers of the early 20th century and a huge inspiration to me.
Who is your inspiration?
Berenice Abbott 
The O line pier 1930 
Hot Dog Vendor 1936 
Pike St. 1935 
Unemployed Camp 1930 
Bowery St 1936 
Radio Row 1936 
32nd St. News 1936 
Brooklyn 1936 
1935 
Wanamakers 1936 
7th Ave from 35th st. 
Manhattan 1936 
Penn Station 1936 
James Joyce 
James Joyce 
Docks 1936 
Automat 1936
Jul
09
Tip#5 – Moments Pro Camera App. I’ve been using this app for a few days now and I’m very impressed by it. Unlike the photo editing Apps on the market the “Moments Pro Camera” app interfaces with your camera and turns it into a fully functioning DSLR. It allows you to control white balance, shutter speed, aperture, ISO settings, dual focus and exposure points, and like a DSLR, if you press the shutter lightly it will focus and then press harder and it will take the photo. One of the coolest features is the “long exposure settings”. If you have a simple iPhone tripod you can increase the shutter speed and play with long exposure shots! This is the hottest app on the market right now and it’s available for both ISO and Android.
The design of the app is simple, elegant and intuitive. Even if you’re not experienced shooting in manual mode on a DLSR, this app will show you in real time the changes in your photos as you play with the different settings. It gives you options to shoot in JPG (the default for all camera phones) or for you DSLR buffs out there; it will even shoot in RAW format.
The app isn’t free; it’s $5.00, which is the price of a large Latte and it’s well worth it. There is educational support if you want to learn more about the functionality in the form of YouTube tutorials or weekly newsletter tips. This app is a game changer for unlocking the true potential of your camera phone.
Happy shooting!
Apr
29
Long before Facebook, Twitter and viral videos, magazines like National Geographic, LIFE and TIME were bringing powerful images into American homes. We still see them on the Internet today. Most of us scroll through these images without giving a thought to the photographers who went out into the world to capture them. This was the heyday of photo essays and journalistic photography, and the average reader wouldn’t recognize names like; Alfred Eisenstaedt or Margaret Bourke-White, but you would most definitely remember the iconic images they took that made their way into the American Zeitgeist through LIFE Magazine.
Grey Villet isn’t a household name, but as a freelance photographer, commissioned primarily by LIFE and TIME magazines, Grey was given assignments to create photo-essays that capture the essence of some of the most poignant stories and social movements of that time.
Gay rights in New York. – This issue is obviously close to my heart, especially now with Gay men being rounded up, put into camps and tortured in Chechnya. It’s easy to loose track of how far we’ve come in the United States when it comes to Gay rights, but in the 1960’s, the movement was just beginning. Here in our own country, the people who were tasked with protecting the rights of citizens were raiding gay bars and arresting men simply for being homosexual. The birth of the gay rights movement here in the U.S. was a powder keg of anger and passion. Grey Villet was tasked by TIME magazine to cover the protests. These were some of the first images that actually portrayed individual Gay people, their struggles and the passion behind their cause.
Loving vs. the state of Virginia – As gay men and women were fighting for their rights in the 60’s, there was an interracial couple in Virginia who were also fighting for their right to love and marry, a right that Gay couples fought for just a few years ago, and in some states, we are still fighting. Mildred and Richard loving were married in Washington D.C. in 1958. It wasn’t until they moved back to their home state of Virginia did they realize that they may be subject to arrest for the crime of miscegenation (mixing of races). In fact, Virginia lawmakers told them that they would indeed be arrested and face 25 years in prison if they didn’t leave the state, (and their family and friends). They weren’t the first interracial couple to get married, but this case captured the attention of the whole country. The images that Grey Villet captured of their life, along with the accompanying story in LIFE magazine, made a huge impact in the heart of the country. Sure, the images didn’t change everyone’s mind, but putting a human face to the issue makes it just that much more difficult to hold on to one’s racist views.
At a time when there was no digital photography and no Photoshop, the job of a good photojournalist required patience, technical skill and the ability to really understand their subjects. Photographers whose images graced the pages of TIME, LIFE or NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC we’re empathetic, astute observationalist’s and masters of their craft. We owe thanks to these courageous photographers, like Grey Villet, for their legacy of images, images that tell the story of all those who came before us, braved the trail to give us the rights that we may now take for granted.
Nov
05
My friend Michael sent me a link to this article today and it really moved me. The focus of the article and accompanying video was on the artistic eye of the photographer; specifically, how portraits can be shaped by the photographer’s point of view rather than just the subject being documented. In this video, the same person was photographed by six different photographers – the twist: Each photographer was given different information as to the background of the subject. The subject’s backgrounds were varied and fictional. The result: incredibly different portraits of the same man.
In my work, I strive to bring out the personality of each subject I photograph. Getting to know who that person is shapes the style and direction of each portrait. It’s one of the most rewarding aspects to my craft. This article really hit home and reminded me of how important a photographers eye and vision is to portraiture.
Enjoy this contribution from www.shutterbug.com
Thank you Michael Armentrout for sending me the article.
