Scanfest Resumes

I've been reading a genealogy book - one about writing your history, and looking at the photos makes me jealous. These gorgeous black and white photos of days gone by, which we have very few of, beautiful certificates and memorabilia, and even the color photos are nice. The boxes of ephemera looks so nicely old and well loved and well used. I was thinking that if I photographed boxes of ephemera, they would simply look cluttered and dirty and disgusting.



They did lead me to resume Scanfest. Instead of starting with one of the big boxes, I thought I would start with a smaller album. Note that the first photo is not all inclusive of the photos that need scanning. This album is one my sister gave me, probably for my daughter's second birthday. It wasn't a quick scan-while-reading-blogs, because the photos are tucked into sheets, so they had to be taken out and put back in after the scan. It is a nostalgic trip down memory lane through diaper changing and spoon feeding days. One thing I love about these pictures is that they are taken before we became artistic. The backgrounds are clear for everyone to see. I can see what my sister's place looked like.

I think we need to do more of that. Besides taking the artistic shot, and the closeup shot while blurring the background, once in a while, we should take a wide angle view of the background. So what if it is cluttered or boring. It will remind the future us of the setting of the story of our lives in 2010.

Do You Want to Scan Another Image?

I want to know who it is that keeps sneaking into my house every night and moving my marker closer to the front of the photo box? You're in big trouble! Every day, for the last several days, I kept thinking "I'm almost done with this box." Then, when I look at the box in the morning, there seems to be more pictures left to do than "almost done."

I don't have any more camera stories. I bought a 35mm camera, a couple of them actually. One was a fixed focus, and one required more work from me. I don't know which photos are which. I can make blurry photos with either one. I think they lasted me for a long time, although I may have had to replace the fixed focus one.

In keeping with the historical nature, I present to you my very first apartment. I did an awesome job of taking only the pretty pictures, so I don't have any pictorial evidence of how incredibly awful that first apartment was. This was my entertainment center. The television was black and white. I found it when I went to the used furniture store to furnish my entire apartment. I hadn't really thought about buying a television, but it was only $20. Everything else on the stand appears to be bought new, although most things in the apartment were bought used. I never did get a phone for that apartment, even though I lived there a whole year. No, there wasn't a computer either. I had a typewriter, what did I need a computer for? The whole office at work shared one computer. I think there was a spreadsheet on it.

On the right of the television are my state-of-the-art cassette tapes. I bought them from Columbia Records and Tapes. I had calculated that each tape cost me $7.49 when you factored in all the free ones and the postage. That wasn't that cheap, but I was a college student when I bought them, and I had more disposable income then. Those holders can hang on the wall, and they have, from time to time. Underneath the television are records. Underneath that is the stereo. It has a radio, a record player. Notice the two cassette tape players. You can play one, and record on the other. It takes as long to record as it takes to play it. The other nice feature of two cassette tapes is that you can push play on both, and when the first tape is finished, it would automatically start on the second one. I was very sad and lonely that year, so I worked a lot of overtime when I lived there, and I didn't spend a lot of time at the apartment. I generally always had some music playing when I was at home. There were a couple of records that I played over and over again, because they gave me comfort, so this stereo got a lot of use.

I still have almost everything but the television now. The plant died a few years ago. The charity didn't want my couch when I was ready to give it away. I gave my records to my brother-in-law last year.

1985

I know that those of you who are following along on my camera history are waiting with baited breath to get the next edition. You can breathe now. The year is 1985, and I took one of those vacations, you know, a big one, where I went to three different banks to borrow enough money to do. I also borrowed my brother's 35mm camera, because I already knew the inferiority of my 110.

I came home with a new lens cover, which attaches to the camera, and rolls and rolls of film that had gone through several airport security checks. I was worried about the quality of the photos after they had gone through those. But these were Special Pictures, so nothing but the best for them. I got the large prints, the 4" x 6", because I knew nobody would really want the doubles, and because they were Special. I figured I could get enlargements and doubles of the really good ones. I apparently wasn't thinking of poor future me, who would only have room for 3 pictures at a time on the scanner.

Well, several of the rolls had no pictures on them. I guess I should have gotten a lesson on loading the film in the camera before I went. I was trying to save money and film, so I put the film in, but apparently not enough for it to catch, so I wound up taking a lot of pictures without film advancing. And since I didn't know what was wrong, I went ahead and wound it up and developed it. These pictures needed manual focusing, so the first day, when I had jet lag, all the pictures are shaky. All of them. All day. Luckily, I had my 110 camera, which is lighter and therefore easier to carry, and I did eventually learn how to load the 35mm. This photo is from the 110. It isn't labeled, so I'm not sure where it was taken.

I am finally finished with 1985 in my box. Only two more years to go. In this box. I will not think about the two photo albums that have the rest of my vacation shots. The ones that aren't blurry. Or the rest of the boxes.

Happy September

My 110 picture didn't show gratuitous fabric stripping! It was there to show that this is still a quilting blog, and to give you a little hint of things to come. I figured it would be ready by the end of the month, but it isn't. I was busily working on it, and then I received several emails from long lost cousins I haven't talked to in years, requesting a sharing of genealogical information. It pulls you in, I tell you, even when you try to focus elsewhere.

The August birthdays have been celebrated and my daughter is back at school. My sister-in-law inherited this quilt. She kept some of the antiques, but threw away all the paper documenting every thing the aunt owned. I think it was a matter of volume, but it does worry me about what will happen to all my paper. My daughter could easily throw away all my paper. I want to eventually scan all the paper for my genealogy, but I am only halfway through box 2 of my photo scanning project. I'm trying to work on it at least a few minutes everyday, instead of being tied to the computer all day.

Oh, and I figured out that the rectangular pictures in the 110 post are from a disc camera that my roommate owned. The disc camera was more expensive than the 110, newer, and made rectangular pictures which were closer to the size of the 35mm. And it came with a neat film cartridge like the Viewmaster had. Yes, I was a little bit humbled. The 110 has negatives that are like to the 35mm. I know I borrowed her camera a couple of times, and she might have given me some of her prints as well.

110 camera

I lied to you the other day in my instant camera post. I told you that I moved from the instant camera to a 35mm. But I couldn't remember what that camera looked like, which I thought was strange. I realized the reason I couldn't remember a 35mm camera, because I didn't have one! I had a 110 camera. I still have it, as you can see by the photo. It took square pictures, 3 1/2" x 3 1/2". Is that right? Did the 110 produce square photos? I did have access to a 35mm camera, at least the photos, my brother's, so I do have rectangular photos interspersed here and there. The rectangular ones are 3 1/2" x a little less than 5". They are from a 35mm right? I'll tell you more about his camera later when we get to those photos.

I also forgot to mention other camera topics in my high school life. I might have used his camera to take some pictures for a photography class I took in high school. Maybe I borrowed one from the school; I don't remember. I didn't learn much. The teacher wasn't hands on, he asked one of the other students to show me how to develop pictures. He told me to take pictures and develop them without giving any guidance as to what he wanted. Maybe artistically that would be good, but without any basic idea of focusing, depth of field, etc., it is hard to be artistic when you don't have the mechanics down. I went from a point and shoot camera taking snapshots to one I had to manually focus, and make decisions about. I did take a few good black and white pictures though, although my criteria for "good" may not be quite as high as other people's.


There isn't much to tell about the 110. It is small, much smaller than the Polaroid, and lightweight. So it was much more convenient to take places. Which explains the million photos I need to scan from 1984. It is point and shoot, fixed focus thing, so you can take pictures of things up to twelve feet away. If you go to the wikipedia link, it shows you a picture of what the film cartridge looks like. It was quick and easy to change film. I paid for my own film and developing, and found that I really enjoyed taking pictures.

Instant Camera

Sorry about leaving the cleaning post up so long. People probably think that I either have a very messy house or a very clean one. It is neither. I took a break from the machines and read a book. It talks about adding historical information to your genealogy, so you are writing a social history and using your family as characters. No need to fictionalize. And there is a broader audience than just your family. Of course, I can't do this, because my family is very private. If I do write anything, it will have to be sealed for a 100 years or so.

I've been scanning instant pictures, and although I haven't done the historical research, I thought I would tell you the story of my instant camera.

There was a fund raising at my high school, and we were to sell raffle tickets. The person who sold the most raffle tickets would win a prize. There might have been three prizes total, one each for the top three. I took my role of fund raiser seriously, as I did everything else, and went door to door to sell raffle tickets. This is very different from the way we handled fundraisers with my daughter, where I bought a few raffle tickets and decided that was enough, and we definitely wouldn't be going door to door.

I didn't sell tickets to win the prize, but after a while, I found that I was pretty successful, and that maybe there was a chance that I would win a prize.

At the same time, our "family group" which is what we called our homeroom class, had a Secret Santa. We drew names out of the hat, and we were supposed to do nice surprises for the person from time to time for the prescribed time period - two or three weeks. My Secret Santa did not get me anything for a while, and I felt gypped, but I was enjoying thinking of giving little gifts to my person. One day, my Secret Santa asked me how it was going. I didn't know it was him at the time, but I had to be honest and tell him that I hadn't gotten anything yet. He only gave me one gift that I can remember, but it was a big one. He had been selling raffle tickets as well, and he had given them to me to claim them!

I won my Kodak instant camera. It wasn't the first prize, but I preferred it over the other prizes. Film was expensive for the 35 milimeter camera, but it is even more expensive for the instant camera. The difference, of course, is that you don't have to pay for processing. You also can't make copies or enlarge, etc., but at that time, I wouldn't have been able to afford to do those things anyway.

I also bought a 35mm camera. It was a fixed focus kind, with no zoom. I went to college with the cameras. My camera usage went up dramatically that year, both with the instant camera and with a 35 mm camera. I have one picture dated 8/30/1980 with the instant camera, and 27 in 1982. Since there were 10 pictures in each pack, I'm not sure if I am missing pictures from 1980, or if I used the same pack in 1982 that I started in 1980. The picture is of my dorm room, so nice and neat. Te hanger is holding my necklaces. All the posters were ones that had been given to us for free. By this time, Polaroid was suing Kodak for copyright infringement on the camera, and I thought that it was possible that my days with the Kodak were numbered. Both Kodak and Polaroid had film that would only fit their camera, so if Polaroid won, Kodak would stop making the film, and I wouldn't be able to take any more pictures with my Kodak instant camera.

One day, a boy asked me if he could borrow my instant camera. I didn't know him very well, but I saw him around from time to time He lived in another wing of the dorm, and I said yes. He would borrow it from time to time, and return it, but eventually he just kept it, and I knew where I could get it back if I needed it. He probably had it for at least a couple of months when one of my friends suggested that we go to his room. I still didn't know him very well, but since I was going with my friend, I said okay. It turns out that he was selling fake drivers licenses using my camera. He had made a big poster of a drivers license, and had the student stand in front of it and take a picture of it. He offered to pay me, but I decided that I would rather have my camera back. It wasn't that it mattered to me that he did this, but I just didn't want to have me or my belongings associated with illegal activities. I was over 18 and legally old enough to drink, so I didn't need a fake drivers license.

Oh and in case you were wondering what happened to the white border around the photo, I cut it off! I had seen some scrapbooks, when scrap booking first became introduced, where people had cut photos into interesting shapes to put in the book. They don't do that as much anymore, but I have many old pictures where the background has been cut off. I was worried that the chemicals might spill out on the instant photos, but I tried it on one, and it was fine, so I did the rest. I only have two photos without the white taken out.

Kodak lost the lawsuit, but by that time I had switched over to using the 35 mm camera completely. According to the Kodak website, rebate checks and certificates were issued beginning November 4, 1988.

Slave to My Machines

I've been playing Machine Master here on the High Road. To keep the house running, I've been working on keeping my machines well orchestrated. The clothes washer and dryer have to continuously be working. No slacking off! It's never ending. As soon as it is finished with one load, there is another load miraculously waiting for it. The dishwasher has to do its share.

Of course, the scanner must always be working on scanning some pictures. It is an obedient servant. It even asks "Would you like to scan another picture?" It seems like a polite question at the beginning of the day, but at the end of the day, I distinctly sense an attitude in the question. It's halfway through box two! Remember the good old days when I only found about 10 pictures worth taking a year? Thank goodness I don't have to scan recent pictures, where the average is about 10 pictures a day!

The lawn mower and the vacuum cleaner also have to be kept supplied. The unfortunate part of all this, of course, is that someone had to be there to supervise, and keep supplied the washer and the dryer and the dishwasher and the scanner and especially the lawnmower and vacuum cleaner.

Which gives me no time for cleaning - I still want to clean the garage and the basement before the summer is up. And do some painting jobs. But that's manual labor, and I'm too busy supervising my machines.

Hopefully, one of these days, I can get the sewing machine into action. It is a machine, after all, and it's got lots of work to do!

Scanfest Decisions

We (well mostly I) have been continuing the Great Scanfest 2009. We're past the halfway mark on the first box. Luckily, we can scan 4 pictures at a time. The daughter made a great decision early on to scan each and every photo. There are some - the blurry ones, the ones of old friends we no longer keep in touch with, the ones of things we don't care about, etc.- that I thought we could skip, but I now agree that this way we don't have to worry about which ones have been scanned and which ones haven't. It does save on the decision making, so it probably makes the process go much faster. The problem is the free double prints we have a lot of. It is fine when the prints are next to each other so only one has to be scanned, but you know, they almost never are right next to each other. Which means I scanned this blurry photo twice. The other one was turned the right way, but this one hasn't been.

The tagging decisions are harder to come by. I had a trial version of Adobe which did a great job of categorizing location, person, event, date, etc, but with tagging all those things get jumbled together. I thought keeping them separate would make them easier to find, so I thought "Location: Washington, D.C." would work better than Washington, or Washington D.C., or D.C. The kid thinks that is too much work. I think it is fine to tag it whichever, and we can move them to the right place as a group, so it isn't really an issue right now.

In the meantime, I am still working on the Blushing Bride quilt. I am really liking the variegated thread I have chosen to use. I am anxious to get on to the next quilt - hopefully making another coins quilt, but simple this time around.

I am also shopping to take advantage of all those great back to school sales.

The Great Scanfest has Begun!

Every time there is a birthday in our family, my sister and I talk about creating a slide show for that individual. It is really fun to arrange the photos, and choose the special music, and select the theme that would really show the birthday boy or girl how much s/he means to us. We did one slide show for our mother, and she really enjoyed it. We managed to get her to laugh and to cry in one five minute presentation.

The problem with creating the slide show, is that a lot of our pictures are in photo format. And it just doesn't seem right to have a birthday slide show that features just the last few years. Both of us - my sister and I - take a lot of pictures - although she would win any contest hands down, and we have boxes of photos. - (my daughter and brother-in-law also get in on the act from time to time; there is a picture of a sock in the batch of pictures with this box.) I started out with albums, but with the magnetic pages deteriorating the photos, I wound up with boxes. I have purchased albums, but I think the boxes work just fine, and digitizing the photos will make them more accessible if we tag them properly.

I mentioned the idea of scanning the photos to my daughter, and she jumped on the idea. I think it is her way of getting copies of all of my photos. She is scanning everything - even the blurry ones, and the unimportant ones (really do we need copies of all of the animals we saw at the zoo?) Whenever I ask her to do anything for me, esp anything that involves cleaning, she reminds me that she is going to scan pictures for me.

My mother doesn't understand why we want to scan pictures when we already have the prints. I do see the logic of that, but someday we might even make prints of pictures we only have digitally.

My daughter was explaining the process to her friend, who mentioned that there were a lot of pictures in the box. Daughter told friend that there were four other boxes where this one came from. I decided it wouldn't hurt her to think four, when the actual number is almost double that. That paper that is sticking up, that is the marker that shows how far she's gone.