Sorting the Past

Years ago, while we lived in South Dakota, I borrowed negatives of childhood-era photos from my mother and had prints made for myself. I was not terribly pleased with the results, but the copies were better than nothing. I don't know why the color is off--these were black and white negatives. Perhaps this was the result when making prints from b/w negatives on color print equipment. Perhaps it was also inferior quality ink, as it seems to me the prints are growing redder as time passes.

However, having these prints, plus the original prints from Mother's album (some of which are duplicated in the album), plus some prints I have made from my own recent scans, means that I have multiple copies of some photos, of varying quality and different sizes.

Before I put away the project before the holidays, I had scanned in quite a few of the small photos. By the time I got it out again, I'd lost track of what I had already scanned. So I put together pages of those scanned photos in small size (20 per page) and printed those proof sheets out. They are a great help in keeping track!

Then I decided to begin organizing this stage of the project by sorting out the photos to find the duplicates. Then I will organize chronologically, marking the ones I have already scanned. Then I can make prints of the ones that have those tiny originals or which can be improved by running them through the photo program. Then, finally, I'll be ready to make up the album pages.

Since I'm not really working at speed on this, I don't know when I'll finish. But just formulating a plan has already helped me feel engaged in the project again.

Starting the Sort

Back to the Project

Have you ever been involved in a project, been interrupted for quite some time, then tried to go back to it? This is, to me, the most difficult part of sticking with and completing a project.

Sometime before the holidays I had to clear all my old-photo-books-to-new-scrapbooks project off my kitchen/dining table. There was no point in getting it all out again before the holidays were over, because it would have to come right back off. After the holidays, I had a session of bronchial asthma where for a few weeks I did not feel like doing much of anything.

Now the holidays are long past, I am fine, and it is time to get back to the project and get it finished. But I've put it off and put it off, reading and reading and reading (or listening to) books. The problem in getting my head back in the project is--getting my head back in the project. Where was I? Which photos had I scanned already? Which photos do I have duplicates of? What is the best way to sort the photos chronologically when they are often mixed up in the album--and some are glued in so well that I can't peel them off to put them in the correct order? And how can I be sure of the correct chronology when so many are not labelled? (If there are kids in the photos, I make my best guess by the sizes we are.)

Well, it's easier to just read another book!

But I am taking myself in hand, and I have begun again. One of the first of the little bitty prints I scanned and put through the auto program for improving, was of such poor quality that it seemed rather like a lost cause and a useless exercise to try to save. However, I could see that it was of a fairly large gathering of some of my mother's family--just the sort of photo I do want to save. Someone with real photoshopping skills might be able to get a little more from it, but you do have to have something to work with first. The group is standing on the south side of the Rooney House (as we called it, after the landlady's name). How small this house looks to me now--we lived there from the time I was two until I was nine, and it was much larger then!

For those of you who are family:  Back row--Grandpa and Grandma Mackey holding McLaughlin twins; 

Rose; Red, top of head just showing in back; In front--Dorothy with Michelle; Vera holding Kerry and hand
on Grace's shoulder; Jessie holding Jerry; Terry; Glen, Gary Gilbert, Larry, and Glen (Junior) Rogers.
(Wish I knew who took the photo (Bob?) and where Bobbie is--she should have been there.)

Anyway, here is how it turned out. Not good, but I was able to identify the people in it and make a pretty good guesstimate of the year, which I believe is 1947. Perhaps I am over-obsessed with trying to preserve some of these things. But I see not only an era that is passing, but one that has already passed. And yet that time is part of the history of my sisters and myself. Memories and old photos are links to that past that we lived and that helped form us.