All posts by Tom Dills

Scanning Old Photos

Scanning Old Photos

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Photo of Kathy’s Grandmother from 1911

For the past several months, Kathy & I have been working on a project of scanning old photos.  We had retrieved a couple dozen albums from Kathy’s parent’s house after they passed several years ago, some of them dating back to the early 1900s.  We had promised to scan them to digital files to be shared with her brother & sister and any other relatives that might be interested.  In addition to those photos we had albums and boxes of our own photos, some from our separate childhoods up to when we met, then hundreds of photos from when we were married, all of our kids, vacations and other activities up until we started taking digital photos.

Now that we have more free time, we decided to use the winter months to finally tackle those old photos.  We knew it would be quite a project, but we didn’t really realize how big of a project it would be.  But we’re just about finished, at least until my brother decides to clean out his attic and bring me all of the photos from my own side of the family tree!  And I still have binders and boxes of my old slides to address at some point.  But that is a different project, that if I decide to face it at all, will come at a later time.

Kathy’s Great Grandparents from the early 1900s

One of the difficult decisions we faced with these old photos was what to do with them once they were scanned.  To me the whole point of scanning them is to get rid of the paper.  Makes sense, right?  It’s not reasonable to expect that anyone else is going to want to take over boxes and boxes of old photos, loose now because they have been removed from the albums.  And many of the albums had to essentially be destroyed in order to get the photos out.  Our kids have grown up in an age that hardly ever prints anything, and they certainly don’t want to inherit all that stuff!  The logical conclusion was to toss them out, and that is what we did.

Throwing away old photographs was all well and good until it came time to scan the photos from our own kids when they were growing up.  It didn’t bother me to throw out old photos of people I didn’t know, but the idea of tossing photos of our own kids into the trash gave me a bit of angst that I hadn’t anticipated.  I struggled with it for a while, but ended up rationalizing that having the digital copies preserves the memories that those photos represent, and that having the paper stored in a box somewhere out of sight was ultimately no different than storing them on a hard drive somewhere that I never looked at.  And this way they are preserved for posterity, using the same methods I use for all of my other photos.

Kathy’s Grandfather and his brother from sometime in the early 1900s

The idea of throwing away anything old can be difficult, and perhaps the idea of throwing away actual family mementos can border on horrifying.  We went through a lot of this when we downsized from our larger home to where we are now, but we got through it.  My one concession to the idea that “everything must go” is that I decided to keep some of the really old photos.  My decision to keep them was not necessarily because of who the people are, but simply because they are old photos.  There is a historical value to keeping them, and I’m thinking of them more for their value and interest as artifacts and less for the actual people they represent.  I’ve attached copies of a few of them here.  I haven’t saved many, but some of the oldest and more interesting ones will go into an archival storage box.  But just one box!

I’ll plan to do some more posts about some of the technical aspects we faced and how we resolved them.  I know that we’re not the only people facing the prospect of what to do with old photos, and hopefully our experience will serve as something of a guide for others who are thinking of doing the same thing.  We’ve talked about offering our scanning services to our neighbors, but I think we’ll hold off on that for a while, as we’re kind of tired of looking at old photos.  And very soon it will be time to go make some more photos!

Random Thoughts

Riding The Bus

I wish I could remember his name, but our driver was very proud of his bus.

Kathy & I took the bus into town yesterday to have lunch with a friend.  It was a good way to get there and not have to pay for parking, the price of which borders on extortion.  We’re very glad we don’t have to pay for parking any more!

We’re fortunate that there is a bus stop conveniently located just outside our neighborhood.  The stop serves 3 different routes, two of which go directly downtown, and a ride is only $2.20 each way.  In another year or so we’ll be able to buy a monthly unlimited pass for $44.00 or a 10-ride pass for $9.35.  Not a bad deal!

The bus stop is a 10-minute walk from our house, which is about as far away from the bus stop as you can get in our neighborhood.  While we were waiting for the bus, one of our neighbors drove by, saw us, turned around and came back to ask us if “everything was OK.”  We assured her that everything was fine, that we were just waiting for the bus to go downtown.

It was nice of her to stop and ask, and I know I’m probably missing the point, but I just thought it was interesting that seeing someone waiting for the bus seemed like there might be a problem.

I didn’t take a camera with me, so I’ve used a picture of a bus from Italy.  It’s one that we also rode, just to a much more interesting destination (sorry Bob!). 🙂

Photography

A Year of Departure

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The Colosseum in Rome

“I find it odd to confine life events and creative evolution to the arbitrary boundaries of a calendar year, but, as I have noted before, I welcome the excuse to pause and examine the progress, trends, and implications of my experiences in the past months.” Guy Tal

Statue of Puerto Rican composer Catalino “Tite” Curet Alonso in the Plaza de Armas, San Juan Puerto Rico

Odd or not, the tendency to compartmentalize our lives into blocks of 365 days is as good a way to reflect as any.  A calendar year works as well as a birthday or anniversary year for that purpose.  And I fear that if it wasn’t for the annual reminder, many of our species would not bother to look back at all, occupied as we are with running around, faces glued to electronic devices of all kinds in our real or imagined “busy-ness.”

The Doge’s Palace in Venice, Italy
Michelangelo’s “David” at the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze (Academy Of Florence Art Gallery)
The Vatican and St. Peter’s Basilica

As I looked back through my photographs from 2018 I began to realize that it was truly a year of departure for me, both literally and photographically.

  • Kathy & I “departed” from the workplace after 40 or so years of work.
  • We “departed” the shores of the U.S. for another continent for the second straight year
  • My photography “departed” from the norm, as more and more of my photographs had people in them
  • My photography “departed” from the norm, as more and more of my photographs were finished in black & white
  • Even more of my photos taken “in” a place are not “of” or “about” that place
  • We spent a month (actually 28 days) at the beach, the longest either of us had ever been away from home
Castiglione d’Orcia, Italy
Early morning, quiet street in Venice, Italy
Early morning, quiet street in Venice, Italy

I’m not sure what to make of the fact that more and more of my photos have people in them.  I’ve historically considered myself to be primarily a landscape photographer, and have often responded to requests to photograph weddings and portraits with something along the lines of “notice that most of my photos do not have people in them.  Thanks, but no.”  I do think that as I get older I find that experiences and relationships have taken a higher priority than trophy icon shots or sunrises and sunsets.  Oh, I still get my share of those, but for the most part the photos that call my name are the ones that bring back memories of a place, or more likely the memory of my feelings that I had when I was in the place.  Venice is a good example.  As much as I loved Tuscany, the few hours that I spent – mostly alone – wandering around Venice in the early morning is one of my most cherished memories.

Room keys on maid’s cart, Pienza, Italy
Pienza, Italy
Montalcino, Italy

I chose this collection of photos not because they are my “best” or “Greatest Hits” from 2018, but rather because they represent how I feel about the things I did and places I went, and how I felt while I was there.  It’s not that these are photos I never would have taken previously, but more that they are photos that better capture my memory of a place, not just documenting what I saw.

Kathy & I wish everyone a Happy New Year.  We’ve got lots planned for 2019 and are looking forward to getting started!

I saw this guy every morning, picking up trash before dawn. While there were a number of these street sweepers, I always knew where this guy was because he whistled constantly. My memories of mornings in Venice include the strains of whatever tunes were passing through his lips.
Palmetto Dunes Oceanfront Resort, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Minneapolis Central Library, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Tuscan countryside near Pienza, Italy
St. Simon’s Island, Georgia
The Pantheon
Random Thoughts

Cheaper Than Moving to Arizona

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Sunset on the beach, Palmetto Dunes Oceanside Resort, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

Here in the southeast US, winter takes two forms.  The first is “the leaves are gone and it’s cold,” and the second is “OH !@#$%.” This coming weekend appears to be “OH !@#$%” and it isn’t even officially winter yet!  The forecast is calling for 8-12″ of snow and low temperatures in the 20s.  We’ll see, but it looks like the confidence is pretty high.  Yikes.

One of the things that Kathy & I have been talking about for this winter is what temperature to set the thermostat at.  Now that we’re home every day we don’t want to leave it set at 65 degrees like we did when we worked.  But we don’t want to keep it set too high, as we’d like to keep from blowing the gas bill out of the proverbial water.  So ‘what to do’ has been the question.

Perhaps not coincidentally, I have found myself somewhat more sensitive to the cold this year (yes, I know that it hasn’t gotten cold yet!).  While my philosophy has always been to make sure I am wearing adequate clothing before turning up the heat, I’ve been finding it necessary to resist turning it too high this year.

At one point I told Kathy – jokingly – that maybe we should think about moving to Arizona.  But at some point yesterday we decided that even if the gas bill doubled – which it won’t – it would still be cheaper than moving to Arizona!  Although I will admit to looking at cruises leaving this weekend to see if we could escape to the Caribbean!  But we opted to tough it out here at home, and turn up the thermostat if we need to.