In article <[email hidden]>,
[email hidden] says...
Quoted message said:My grandmother's 80th birthday is on Sunday, and each nuclear family unit
is making a "memory book" page for her. My sister didn't have time to do
one for her family, so I did hers too. I've never done it before.
Including the shopping for supplies, which was the most time consuming
part, it took me 4 hours to do the project. Only 2 pages, lol. But, the
good thing is, I did not think about smoking OR eating the entire time. Of
course, when I was done I was pretty hungry as that made it 10 hours total
since I'd last eaten, but a normal sized dinner of brocolli and grilled
chicken satisfied me just fine. Now I want to do more pages with all these
photos I have lying around. Looks like I have something to spend all that
money on that I'm saving from not smoking. Ok, I may have a new addiction.
But at least this one won't kill me.
That's a GREAT idea! I need to get back to my project of digitally retouching
and archiving family photos. Photoshop Elements does a GREAT job of it and it's
relatively cheap s/w, especially if there's a rebate going on. One of my
(Microtek) scanners was only $30 on sale and it does a great job of scanning.
CD-RW drives and media are also much more affordable these days, so burning
photos onto CDs to share with the rest of the family can be very satisfying and
makes it much more likely that the photos will survive for the next generation(s)
-- this distribution is especially important in case there is a fire or other
disaster -- that way, your precious photos may still be salvagable, yet take up
no more space than a few CDs -- even LESS if you put them on DVDs, which hold
over 4G each (although DVD writers and media are still relatively expensive).
It was a very absorbing project and brought back SOOO many memories. Also, by
bringing photos up on a screen after scanning them, I saw SOOO many details in
the background that I had never noticed before. I was able to date a photo down
to the year once by zooming in on the calendar on the wall in the background,
narrowing it down to two possible years that I couldn't quite make out, and then
matching the days of the week to a back-dated PC calendar to really pin it down
-- to the year 1908. I identified someone standing in front of a window in the
house BEHIND a group photo. I spotted my (very thin and oh-so-young) grandmother
standing in the open doorway, holding my newborn uncle in a photo of my 6-yr-old
mother and 3-yr-old aunt who were on tricycles in their front yard (I think
Grandma was scolding them (or Grandpa), based on her pointing/wagging finger and
the scowl on her face :-) I realized that a photo of what I had (all my life)
thought of as my mother about to put a nurturing hand on my sick, thumb-sucking
sister's forehead to feel for a fever was actually a photo of mom about to swat
her hand because my sister had just swiped some frosting off the cake in front of
her and was actually licking the frosting off her thumb, not sucking it in
COMFORT :-) A really tiny photo of what I thought was my mother aunt and their
first babies in strollers actually turned out to be my mother, sister -- and a
complete stranger and her baby :-) The hardcopy photo was so small, though that
I couldn't tell that until then. Tiny, bland little photos that you always just
sort of skimmed past before, once enlarged on screen can smack you in the face,
especially if you make color corrections (photos from the 60s and 70s can be
particularly bad in color distortion). Just BRIGHTENING (or darkening) some
photos and adjusting the contrast can make ALL the difference! When I saw how
much better some photos were after just small color and lighting corrections, I
wanted to go back in time and smack the drugstore photo processors silly for not
caring enough to get them right the first time.
I spent hours just removing dust specs and cracks from photos (mostly with the
clone stamp). You'd be AMAZED at much crisper photos can be once they are
cleaned up this way. I was also amazed at how damaging fingerprints were. Pay
attention when handling photos, people -- 60 years later fingerprints can be hard
as cement (especially if the hands weren't too clean to begin with) and are a
pain in the ass to try to blend away depending on where they are. I've cropped
photos where a person is off to the side or toward the bottom of the photo, with
the surrounding furniture, curtains, pictures on the walls, lamps, etc.,
dominating them, and suddenly the PERSON (who is the REAL point of the photo,
after all) became the rightful focus. Got a stray electrical cord in the
background? Clone a blank portion of the wall and blot over it -- VOILA! Nice
clean background (you can clean up smudges, brighten paint, and patch holes in
the wall that way, too -- it's never too late to tidy up the house to pass the
white-glove test, even if it IS 30-50 years later :-) In some cases of
particularly untidy backgrounds, I actually traced around the person and just
added my own background instead, making all the difference (keeping a copy of the
original for the sake of historical accuracy, of course). It also sparked a LOT
of questions from me to my mother, grandfather, etc., to clarify some things and
identify various people, places, times and events.
I sent out CDs of photos I had scanned and retouched (and some still unretouched)
to many of my extended family for Xmas the year before last. I used a program
called DVD PhotoPlay to create a slide show and added appropriately sappy music
that was sure to invoke wistful smiles and sentimental tears here and there
(Ronan Keating, "When You Say Nothing At All (Notting Hill soundtrack); Elvis
Presley, "Memories"; and John Lennon, "In My Life"😉 -- there are lots of programs
that can do this (probably much better than that one). The CD played in later
model DVD players so they could be viewed on large TV screens, giving them even
MORE impact. I brought my laptop to my grandfather's place to show them to him
and he LOVED it! My grandmother had died earlier in the year, so it was
especially poignant to see her during so many phases of her life, and to remind
us that she, too, was once a vivacious young girl, a beautiful young wife and
mother, an active grandmother, great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother, and a
much-loved woman. They were also reminders of some of her idiosyncracies,
producing wry smiles and lots of memories of hilarious and/or embarassing moments
:-)
All in all, it was a VERY rewarding, cathartic (and time-consuming) experience.
I HIGHLY recommend it if you have the time and resources, even if you AREN'T
trying to quit smoking :-)
--
Saffire
205/149/125 - 5'1.5"
Atkins since 6/14/03
Progress photo: http://photos.yahoo.com/saffire333
