scan all my photos

I was really worried about losing all my photos or something happening to them so I started scanning them on my home scanner. This took ages and i lost momentum. I searched the internet and found somewhere who scanned photos. I posted all the photos i wanted scanned and they were back in 3 days with a backup DVD. The company was www.scanero.com, i would recommend them.

Last month I bought a film scanner – something I have been hankering after for ages. Ever since I started shooting film and Polaroid in favour of digital it was a must. The scanner has a negative and slide tray with it which I intended to use to archive all of my old photos. What I wasn’t prepared for was the time involved in doing this. Scanning high-res negatives takes a good few minutes for each photo – where 300dpi photo scans are much quicker.

I’m done this mainly to get a digital backup and to get a few choice photos up on Flickr.

My mother has given me some slides she took when my sister was born. She hasn’t seen these for over 30 years and it will be great to get these into the computer. I also have a few packs of slides that I bought at car boot sales. I’m keen to get a Found Photo set established on Flickr and get these uploaded.

I’m trying to get a 30 or so done every weekend. This may be hit and miss but I’ve already made a start and intend to keep at it. I’ll borrow photos from my parents each weekend I see them as well. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, binned all her negatives a few years ago. A few of her sets are starting to stick together as she never put them in albums. I’m seeing my photo scanning as mission of mercy before my childhood photos are ruined.

On a side ‘Thing’ – I’m also putting more of my film photos into albums. Like the hoarder I am I’m not getting rid of any negatives or photos that don’t make it into albums. I’ll be buying a big air-tight plastic box in which to keep these in the loft.
I can’t see this process ever really coming to an end due to my magpie like skills to acquiring photos but once the majority as scanned I’ll consider it done.

I can’t believe it, I’ve actually finished with this one now!!!!!

It took about 4 days to finish them off (I still had half to do), but I mean I sat at it and really did nothing else for those 4 days.

In addition, I scanned the outside of the multi picture frames we have in the house, and printed out a couple of A4 sheets with the photos all in the right place to pop behind the frames. I’m planning to change the photo’s in the frames every couple of months so we don’t get bored looking at the same pics all the time.

All the originals (2 crates, total volume about 90 litres) now live with one of my cousins, and CD’s with all the scanned photos have been sent to other members of my family, so now everyone has everything that I’ve got :) We are all delighted!

Oh man, this seems like a HUGE job…..and then what, do you toss the hard copies of all those photos?

My father passed away recently, so I’ve been looking through the photo albums and yearbooks. I would like to preserve these by scanning them and keeping them on my computer and maybe a G-Mail account in case my computer unexpectly crashes. This way I wouldn’t feel deprived of precious memories when I give the albums and yearbooks to my younger sister and her family.

big island, hawaii

hand coated platinum print diptych, 8×10 neg, 16” plasmat lens

as in plywood

in the last few months i’ve set to scanning old negs and prints. i’ve discovered that some of my negs have gone missing but hopefully they will turn up. why does it seem that what is most prized ends up missing? truth be told, the activity seems to have more value in inspiring the creation of new work than preserving the old. i do get a queezy feeling on the idea of building a temple to one’s oeuvre. self-knowledge is essential but living, and reliving, the past is a trap.

this is a diptych of two 8×10 platinum prints that i made in the 80’s. industrial wasteland meets medieval castle, the combustible towers we might ascend in defense of our fragile realm.

this is kind of a long term goal because it’s going to take awhile I’m not only scanning my personal pictures, but I’m scanning my parents pictures As I was helping my parents clean out there storage unit I found so many pictures I even found some slides from my Moms first marriage that we don’t care about, but all my brothers baby pictures were on them I don’t think I had ever seen or atleast not seen many baby pictures of him they were all him 5 and up practically which is about when she married my Dad. well I scanned them into the computer and now I’m going to give them to my brother he’ll be happy to have them also found both of my parents pictures from thier high school days I’m gonna scan all this stuff eventually!!

semi-renovation: new tile floor to ceiling
new fixtures.