I was thinking recently about some of the most extraordinary photos I have seen through the years. Like everyone, I imagine I have seen hundreds of thousands of photos in my life and while the ones of my own family and friends stand out; there are those that represent significant moments in humankind. Some of them are so important, all you need to do to create a vision of them is use a few words to describe them.
The Marines putting the flag onto the ground at Iwo Jima is one such a photo. So is the Hindenburg on fire as it crashes to the ground. What about the street execution of the South Vietnamese man or the young girls running naked away from napalm?
Also included in that list has to be the photo of Lee Harvey Oswald being shot or the remarkable photo of the woman and her two children in the California fields during the Depression. I would definitely include Lyndon Johnson being sworn in on Air Force One with Jacqueline Kennedy looking on, still in the dress she wore all day
I can also think of the young woman on her knees wailing at her friend being shot at Kent State University, perhaps the Wright Brothers in their plane or Anne Frank looking up to her left and certainly the sailor kissing a nurse he didn’t know in Times Square celebrating the end of World War II.
Each of these photos are important points on the map of humanity. They reflect who and what we are and they are visual references of our passage through time. They’re important to all of us and certainly their imagery is treasured.
But besides all of them being cultural moments for us, they have another thing in common. Each of those photographs was shot on film and every single one of them ran the risk of being destroyed, or becoming hopelessly faded through time or discarded accidentally.
It took intervention on someone’s part to bring them to life. If they hadn’t been used in the magazines where we all saw them, what would have happened to them? What happened to the hundreds of thousands of others that weren’t included in magazines because they wouldn’t easily fit the space allotted to them or they weren’t what caught an editor’s eye? Sadly, I have to say, much of that collection of work is probably gone.
If each of those photos; the ones that made the magazine as well as the ones that didn’t, were scanned, digitized and saved to CD or DVD, we’d have all of them. Think of the treasured museum exhibits or online galleries we’d have.
Your photos are as treasured in your life as the photos mentioned above are to our common history. You can avoid the loss of those treasures by having them scanned. Once scanned, you can decide which of your photos sees the light of day and can be shared. If they aren’t scanned and, in fact, remain in a box in the basement, that choice one day may not be yours to make.
Joe Allen
The Scan Zone
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Dont Let All those Pictures Scare You
It’s so easy to fall under the spell of disorganization.
Today was a snow day here in the Northeast. Actually, the first good one we’ve had in a while. So I decided to try and get to some things that I had started but never finished. I went down in my basement to get the next big box of family photos so I could scan them as part of my goal of having my family’s photos digitized and safe.
I’ve scanned about five large Rubbermaid-type boxes so far and there are three or four left so, no time like the present, I thought and went to have a look. I chose one, opened the lid, looked in and thought “I can’t deal with these pictures now.” They were a mess. None of them were packed in any way that made sense. It was a box of everyone’s (but mostly my own) laziness or lack of willingness to deal with.
I wanted to close the box and just leave them till the next time. Maybe I’d wait till the weekend. Or next month. Or perhaps even never. Maybe the comet will hit first or one of the photos will come to life and lead all the rest of the photos to freedom!
Anything to avoid dealing with them.
But I’m the business of scanning photos through The Scan Zone and I couldn’t act like that.
So got a bunch of Ziplocs, a magic marker, my iPod with the good earphones and made a comfortable place to sit. I started putting pictures in the most inclusive sets of subjects I could think of and went to work.
My childhood, my parents and brother, my grandparents and their contemporaries, my wife and kids and grandkid, extended family, friends, other people’s parties, vacations and the great equalizer--“miscellaneous.”
Just by doing that, I got through the box fast. In a short time, there were a series of neat, labeled bags. It didn’t matter how many photos there were because with a high-speed scanner, they could be dispatched quickly. They’d all be saved as digital files, which would be joined with other digital files I’ve made to build my family’s collection.
So here’s my advice: Go to where your pictures are with the Ziplocs and magic markers already in hand. This way, when you open the Rubbermaid or the box, you won’t be frightened by its contents’ disorganization but will instead have the antidote to the poison from the anarchy within. Get them in the bags, label them and put them back in the box. Now you’re organized and now you can get them scanned with a structure attached to them. And you won’t have to hope the comet comes in order to avoid dealing with them.
Joe Allen
The Scan Zone
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
The Day the Music Died is Also the Day the Visuals Died
I was sitting around today poking through music and realized it was the 51st anniversary of the day Buddy Holly died. He was lost in that terrible place crash after leaving a concert in Clear Lake Iowa. I was showing my 10-year-old grandson the musical themes that are interconnected, from Holly to the Beatles to Springsteen and beyond.
I explained to him how they called this day “The Day the Music Died.” But as were going through some of that history, I realized that it was the day the visuals died too. From that day on, there would be no more pictures of Buddy Holly taken and we’d have to do with the ones already circulating.
So we looked around a bit and I had a little trouble finding a high quality picture of Holly in a performance. The pictures were grainy, often out of focus, muddied and nearly unwatchable. The same went for the film and video transfers I could find. Compare them with the images of Springsteen or to a lesser extent the Beatles and they don’t hold up.
A big part of the reason is that what we were looking at on the screen were photo scans done long after Buddy Holly died and they were already in the midst of what I call “The Big Fade.” The originals might not have been stored safely and, after decades, were brought out and someone finally had the good sense to scan them. But they had already lost so much of their quality. To my grandson, the photos of this rock and roll pioneer were practically pre-historic.
Imagine, if you will, if that’s the quality of photos of a legend--because they weren’t scanned and preserved--what chance do the photos of ordinary people have of lasting? Well, the answer is, about the same—or worse.
If the technology was there to scan those photos not long after they were taken, preserving them at that moment with minimal loss of quality, he wouldn’t look so, well, historic. He’d look as vibrant and alive as the moment the photo was taken and he would be preserved that way for generations.
The fact that some pictures make it through the decades undamaged while others take an awful beating is reason enough to think about scanning your photos. I don’t want someone a generation or two behind me looking at pictures of John Lennon or my Aunt Pauline or my elementary school principal and thinking about them the same way I think of pictures of say, Woodrow Wilson.
If you have photos stored somewhere, consider digitizing them. They will be captured they way they are, with a minimal amount of degradation and can be output to DVD to be preserved for half a century or more.
When we lose someone, famous or anonymous, close to us or unknown to us, we lose the ability to photograph or videotape him or her. S o all we will have is what is already behind them. By keeping those images safe, they can last for generations or more. They will be immortalized for us as if it were the day they were taken and not as a footnote to our family history.
I explained to him how they called this day “The Day the Music Died.” But as were going through some of that history, I realized that it was the day the visuals died too. From that day on, there would be no more pictures of Buddy Holly taken and we’d have to do with the ones already circulating.
So we looked around a bit and I had a little trouble finding a high quality picture of Holly in a performance. The pictures were grainy, often out of focus, muddied and nearly unwatchable. The same went for the film and video transfers I could find. Compare them with the images of Springsteen or to a lesser extent the Beatles and they don’t hold up.
A big part of the reason is that what we were looking at on the screen were photo scans done long after Buddy Holly died and they were already in the midst of what I call “The Big Fade.” The originals might not have been stored safely and, after decades, were brought out and someone finally had the good sense to scan them. But they had already lost so much of their quality. To my grandson, the photos of this rock and roll pioneer were practically pre-historic.
Imagine, if you will, if that’s the quality of photos of a legend--because they weren’t scanned and preserved--what chance do the photos of ordinary people have of lasting? Well, the answer is, about the same—or worse.
If the technology was there to scan those photos not long after they were taken, preserving them at that moment with minimal loss of quality, he wouldn’t look so, well, historic. He’d look as vibrant and alive as the moment the photo was taken and he would be preserved that way for generations.
The fact that some pictures make it through the decades undamaged while others take an awful beating is reason enough to think about scanning your photos. I don’t want someone a generation or two behind me looking at pictures of John Lennon or my Aunt Pauline or my elementary school principal and thinking about them the same way I think of pictures of say, Woodrow Wilson.
If you have photos stored somewhere, consider digitizing them. They will be captured they way they are, with a minimal amount of degradation and can be output to DVD to be preserved for half a century or more.
When we lose someone, famous or anonymous, close to us or unknown to us, we lose the ability to photograph or videotape him or her. S o all we will have is what is already behind them. By keeping those images safe, they can last for generations or more. They will be immortalized for us as if it were the day they were taken and not as a footnote to our family history.
Joe Allen
The Scan Zone
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