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
Monday, January 25, 2010
Opportunities Abound for Sharing Your Photos
Today’s technology provides us with so many opportunities; it’s hard to decide which ones to take. Let’s just take the world of photos and concentrate on how to present those photos.
You can take your photos and do pretty much whatever you want with them. It’s now easy to present them in digitized scrapbooks, complete with calendars or hard covers. You can upload them to a seemingly endless number of photo sites and make them sharper, restore colors and crop them along the way. You can organize them and give the structure. If you’d like, you can even output certain photos and add music or even interviews to make a family documentary.
People upload their photos to social networking sites so their new friends or their families can see them the way they looked as children or introduce new people to their parents through pictures.
All of these creative presentations of one’s photographic history are interesting. Sure, we love our own photos more than anyone else does, but most everyone who views your digital scrapbook or slide show finds something they like or finds interesting.
But regardless of how you ultimately intend to use your old photos, unless you want to hand them to someone to look at, they are going to have to be scanned, digitized and output to a medium where you can view them. You’ve got boxes of those photos, but with most of the scanners that people have in their homes, it is an agonizingly slow process—so much so that people start and lose the will to go on or choose not do it at all.
But with photo scanning companies with high-speed scanners, it is cheaper than you probably thought to have all your pictures digitized and ready for you to use with the terrific technology-based presentations.
For example, for only about a quarter each, you can scan 1,000 pictures. That’s for photos that are scanned, physically viewed and enhanced if necessary. Lots of different companies can do it for you, but obviously, I would hope you’d give The Scan Zone a try.
Whatever company you choose, I urge you to start soon. Your photos and videos are not getting any younger and with every passing day they are a bit more at risk for fading or being lost or somehow destroyed.
I suggest going to where your photos are with a bunch of plastic bags and a black marker. Move your photos into organized piles with different themes like you would with old baseball cards. Then just put each pile in a bag (or bags) and put them in a different box marked “Ready for Scanning.” This will force you to go through them but without the angst of thinking you have a brutal scanning job in front of you.
Monday, January 18, 2010
There is a Little Bit of "Us" in Every Photo We See
A friend of mine scanned some pictures of her early life and put them on Facebook. She made a few comments about them, describing what they were, where they were from and who was in them. From there, it was really fun to watch what happened.
Her photos were of her life from the time she was a young girl through her mid and late 20’s. I didn’t know anyone in any of the photos except for her but everyone seemed to look so familiar. From the way they looked, her friends could have been my friends and her family had the same look and feel of my parents, grandparents aunts and uncles. She had that youthful, 60’s and 70’s young girl-look that my friends had too.
Looking at her photos made me want to go and look at mine because if I could have fun with someone’s photos featuring people I didn’t know, how great it would be to spend time with people that made up my life.
I sure wasn’t alone in enjoying her pics. Her friends and family were commenting on Facebook, talking about how she looked, how the family looked and how they sure had a great time. Other people in her circle of friend and family started to put photos of their youth on in response and in a very short time it was a veritable festival of family photography.
All those pictures of everyone’s youth up there on Facebook have one thing in common. Every one of those old pictures first had to be scanned and digitized before they could be used on Facebook or anywhere on the internet. The photos were old, many were already faded and most would have benefitted from the minor corrections typically provided by a scanning company, like The Scan Zone. But as digital files, they will now last for the foreseeable future. And any of those people who scanned them in order to share them could burn them on DVD for storage and sharing and not worry about them for 50 years or more.
It was a heartwarming expression of the appreciation of life that I witnessed from my friend’s photos. And as I looked around, just on Facebook, others were doing the same thing and their friends were commenting and uploading photos. They were reminding the people close to them—and others who might not have even known them—what life in their youth was like.
The Scan Zone and dozens of other scanning companies can help people do that. I hope people get around to doing it before their memories are destroyed in a basement or due to a flood or lost in a move. We all make our memories—and they take a lifetime to collect. The sheer number of those photos make people shy away from undertaking the project of digitizing them. But it takes hours for a company with a high speed scanner to do it for you.
Once they’re scanned, you can put the best ones on Facebook and let others comment on how your hair looked, how thin Aunt Carolyn was and what was up with that shirt!
Her photos were of her life from the time she was a young girl through her mid and late 20’s. I didn’t know anyone in any of the photos except for her but everyone seemed to look so familiar. From the way they looked, her friends could have been my friends and her family had the same look and feel of my parents, grandparents aunts and uncles. She had that youthful, 60’s and 70’s young girl-look that my friends had too.
Looking at her photos made me want to go and look at mine because if I could have fun with someone’s photos featuring people I didn’t know, how great it would be to spend time with people that made up my life.
I sure wasn’t alone in enjoying her pics. Her friends and family were commenting on Facebook, talking about how she looked, how the family looked and how they sure had a great time. Other people in her circle of friend and family started to put photos of their youth on in response and in a very short time it was a veritable festival of family photography.
All those pictures of everyone’s youth up there on Facebook have one thing in common. Every one of those old pictures first had to be scanned and digitized before they could be used on Facebook or anywhere on the internet. The photos were old, many were already faded and most would have benefitted from the minor corrections typically provided by a scanning company, like The Scan Zone. But as digital files, they will now last for the foreseeable future. And any of those people who scanned them in order to share them could burn them on DVD for storage and sharing and not worry about them for 50 years or more.
It was a heartwarming expression of the appreciation of life that I witnessed from my friend’s photos. And as I looked around, just on Facebook, others were doing the same thing and their friends were commenting and uploading photos. They were reminding the people close to them—and others who might not have even known them—what life in their youth was like.
The Scan Zone and dozens of other scanning companies can help people do that. I hope people get around to doing it before their memories are destroyed in a basement or due to a flood or lost in a move. We all make our memories—and they take a lifetime to collect. The sheer number of those photos make people shy away from undertaking the project of digitizing them. But it takes hours for a company with a high speed scanner to do it for you.
Once they’re scanned, you can put the best ones on Facebook and let others comment on how your hair looked, how thin Aunt Carolyn was and what was up with that shirt!
Monday, January 11, 2010
Who Is this Person in this Photo? Oh, it's Me!
What is it about seeing old photographs of ourselves that touches us in such different, remarkable ways? Why is it that we see an old photo in which we are included or featured in and right away we want to tell someone “Hey, look at this picture of me.”
Perhaps it’s part ego, perhaps it’s part reflection or perhaps it is our defense against accepting what we might have become now that all those years and life experiences have literally reshaped us. “See, there was a time where I was everything that I don’t seem to be right now.”
The past serves as a great ally as well as an unbeatable opponent. If you’re like me, you link to the past quite easily. I may have a great deal of trouble getting to a place 5 or 10 miles from my door, but I have no trouble getting to place called 1965 or 1973.
I scanned a set of pictures recently which included shots of me from 30 years ago. Of course I enjoyed seeing all the shots of that series because they included my family and friends and spending time with those pictures was the closest I’m ever going to get to spend time with those people again—at least in that way.
But I can’t explain the therapeutic value of seeing photographs I was in and being able to say “There is that guy that I remember being. There is that guy who discovered certain music or enjoyed certain people, live through this president and that or even went through all the rites of passage we seem to have to pass through to get from then to now—wherever now is.
Without a doubt I did what we all do…shook my head and asked where did the time go and promised to remove the baggage I’ve collected along the way so I could look more like that in contemporary photos. But the most remarkable thing was to be able to insert myself into the moments and the context of those photos. I was able to reintroduce myself to the person under the tree in one of those photos. He was 25, unmarried, no kids, no real job, no mortgage, no fears, no boundaries. I first wanted to tell that person “You can’t believe what you have ahead of you.” But I stopped and instead asked “What can you tell me about who I was when all this journey-through-life stuff was beginning.”
That was the therapeutic part.
Many of the photos I scanned that day were fading and were looking very much like the past. But once they were scanned, refreshed and made vibrant again, they offered even greater insight because I could actually see what was in the photos and who some of the other players caught in that instant of time actually were.
After scanning them, I logged them and saved them to DVD and made duplicates of them. But I couldn’t help stopping to look at whom I was with that day or what I might have been thinking or doing when someone interrupted my moment to “Look this way and smile.”
But after a long time doing the headshakes and making the “wow, did I look like that” comments to myself, I made the one final silent chuckle, stopped and called out to my daughter coming down the stairs, “come here, take a look at this picture and tell me who it is.”
There are many reasons to scan your old special family photos. You’ll protect them, give them new enduring life, put them on long-lasting media, share them among others in your family and so on. But one of the most important reasons is to see yourself again. Go back to the moment the photo was taken and touch that time in your life. You may reacquaint yourself with someone very important in your past…..you.
Perhaps it’s part ego, perhaps it’s part reflection or perhaps it is our defense against accepting what we might have become now that all those years and life experiences have literally reshaped us. “See, there was a time where I was everything that I don’t seem to be right now.”
The past serves as a great ally as well as an unbeatable opponent. If you’re like me, you link to the past quite easily. I may have a great deal of trouble getting to a place 5 or 10 miles from my door, but I have no trouble getting to place called 1965 or 1973.
I scanned a set of pictures recently which included shots of me from 30 years ago. Of course I enjoyed seeing all the shots of that series because they included my family and friends and spending time with those pictures was the closest I’m ever going to get to spend time with those people again—at least in that way.
But I can’t explain the therapeutic value of seeing photographs I was in and being able to say “There is that guy that I remember being. There is that guy who discovered certain music or enjoyed certain people, live through this president and that or even went through all the rites of passage we seem to have to pass through to get from then to now—wherever now is.
Without a doubt I did what we all do…shook my head and asked where did the time go and promised to remove the baggage I’ve collected along the way so I could look more like that in contemporary photos. But the most remarkable thing was to be able to insert myself into the moments and the context of those photos. I was able to reintroduce myself to the person under the tree in one of those photos. He was 25, unmarried, no kids, no real job, no mortgage, no fears, no boundaries. I first wanted to tell that person “You can’t believe what you have ahead of you.” But I stopped and instead asked “What can you tell me about who I was when all this journey-through-life stuff was beginning.”
That was the therapeutic part.
Many of the photos I scanned that day were fading and were looking very much like the past. But once they were scanned, refreshed and made vibrant again, they offered even greater insight because I could actually see what was in the photos and who some of the other players caught in that instant of time actually were.
After scanning them, I logged them and saved them to DVD and made duplicates of them. But I couldn’t help stopping to look at whom I was with that day or what I might have been thinking or doing when someone interrupted my moment to “Look this way and smile.”
But after a long time doing the headshakes and making the “wow, did I look like that” comments to myself, I made the one final silent chuckle, stopped and called out to my daughter coming down the stairs, “come here, take a look at this picture and tell me who it is.”
There are many reasons to scan your old special family photos. You’ll protect them, give them new enduring life, put them on long-lasting media, share them among others in your family and so on. But one of the most important reasons is to see yourself again. Go back to the moment the photo was taken and touch that time in your life. You may reacquaint yourself with someone very important in your past…..you.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
We Have Only a Limited Time to Feature the Matriarchs or Patriarchs on Video
One of the services we provide at The Scan Zone is producing “family documentaries” for our clients. We take hundreds of photos, some videos, music, write a script and actually produce it as a 30-minute documentary. A key component of the piece is an interview with the matriarch or patriarch of the family as well as any other family members who can talk about a family’s history.
I always suggest to people that they sit down with the older members of the family and get their perspective on what life was like in early days, how they came to this country and what they thought of the changes in America from then until now. It's mind-boggling to realize that this living testament to the continuity of family has seen so much and is sitting in front of you. Its one thing to read about those seeking a better life coming here or life during the Depression or living through World War II from books or other sources. But it's another to hear it from directly from your grandmother or uncle and know their stories are not only real, but ultimately lead to you.
However, there is one daunting universal truth: Your time with these special people, with all that experience, is finite. They won't be here forever.
Why is it important to videotape them? For several reasons. It puts these key family members on a long lasting DVD in an interview format talking about their lives. It locks in a family’s history from as far as the interviewees can remember straight through to the youngest members of the family right now. It gives context to a family’s story---and the pictures move and they sound like themselves.
Unfortunately, the best of plans don't always work out. Very dear friends of mine were considering doing a family documentary. In fact, we were already at the point of blocking the story and figuring out when to get these folks on tape. But a sad thing happened. The matriarch of the family slipped into an illness that resulted in her being placed in a nursing home with little chance that she will ever again be capable of participating in the documentary.
This is extremely sad. It makes me think of my own life. I have very little material on videotape from my father, mother or grandparents. Yeah, I have hundreds upon hundreds of photos, even some film, but next to no video. In fact, that gives me little, if any, examples of how my Mom or Dad talked. I’d love to let my kids embrace a grandpa they never met, but it will have to be done without voice or movement.
If you’re lucky enough to have people alive and vibrant who you can get on camera, think about doing that. We can even help you do it professionally. If you have videos they are in, please protect them and transfer them to DVD. If you have photos featuring them, scan them and keep them safe. Then you can begin to think about a family documentary that features them and the rest of your family.
Time is a fleeting enemy. Here today and gone tomorrow. That's particularly poignant when thinking about our older family members.
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