Boxes of photos
Written by Nikki-ann on Monday, 3 March , 2008 at 9:55 pm
We have a couple of boxes of old family photos. We don’t know who some of the people are in the photos, but others provide small windows in to the lives of ancestors.
The photo on the right is one I scanned in on Sunday afternoon. It shows my Great Grandparents stood outside their home on the Shropshire/Cheshire border. It helps show how my Grandparents lived. Unfortunately, I’ve been told that the house has long gone so I can’t see what it looks like today. However, the cottage they moved into in their later years still stands and looks a lot like it did back in their day.
The photo needed a bit of a tidy-up. It was under-exposed and torn around the edges. So I cropped it down and use a couple of different adjustments (in Photoshop CS3) including Brightness/Contrast and Exposure.
Other items I scanned on Sunday included a couple of family wedding photos, my Great Great Grandmother Mary Jane’s obituary and a wedding notice for a Great Great Aunt.
I really need to set aside more time to sit and scan more photos. Something which might help with this is the Spring Break Scan-a-Thon (29th March - 6th April) and the next Scanfest on 30th March (as mentioned by Miriam at Ancestories). I think I should mark those dates in my diary and maybe I’ll get through some of those photos.
Category: Family History, Photography, Derricutt, Wilding, Jones
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Comment by Rob
Made Monday, 3 of March , 2008 at 10:04 pm
As ever, I’m impressed at the dedication you put into a project once you start. And you’ve inspired me to start looking at family histories, although I’ll be looking at our family history by proxy - I bought my mum an internet geneaology book for mothers day 
Comment by Apple
Made Tuesday, 4 of March , 2008 at 1:14 am
Scanfest has really motivated me to get more scanning done. We always seem to have a great time. Hope you can make it!
Comment by Gordon
Made Saturday, 8 of March , 2008 at 12:00 am
Sounds like your fairly getting on with the family tree, I have considered looking into mine but I think I pretty much know all the present members that will do for now, I doubt that there is anyone famous in my past..
Comment by Gordon
Made Saturday, 8 of March , 2008 at 12:06 am
P.S you could have your blog auto-redirect
“>
will do a 5 second wait then refresh to new locale
oh and if you don’t want indexed - hide from the crawlbots 
or use a robots.txt - info can be found in a few places - although some bad robots will ignore all of it 
Comment by Cyberevolution
Made Saturday, 8 of March , 2008 at 1:02 pm
Can certainly see the family resemblance, 
Comment by rashbre
Made Saturday, 8 of March , 2008 at 6:18 pm
I really like the photo.
I see you use CS3 etc. Two quick tips :
(1) use levels / shadow highlights to boost the contrast selectively although it didn’t work so well on this pic though cos of working from a tiny jpeg.
(2) a quick way to add punch is to duplicate the photo as 2 layers. Boost the contrast on the back copy for ’surroundings’ and then boost the front copy for facials etc and mix the front layer at circa 85% opacity. Can add punch/depth and help lift the people in the scene.
Excuse my five min attempt on your pic here but of course I was working from the tiny image.
Best rashbre
Comment by rashbre
Made Saturday, 8 of March , 2008 at 6:22 pm
Couldn’t resist putting it through alienskin afterwards to enlarge it also here. Of course I don’t have the detial from your scan, but its still interesting.
Comment by footnoteMaven
Made Tuesday, 11 of March , 2008 at 11:10 pm
I have many photos where the people in them are long forgotten. I scan them and keep them because they do provide insight into the life and times of my ancestors. I find every one very fascinating.
Love Scanfest! I’ve actually accomplished a great deal by attending. Hope to see you there and hope all is well with that other camera.
fM
Comment by simplypink
Made Saturday, 15 of March , 2008 at 3:45 pm
I should be better at writing on the back of my photos. There’s nothing more frustrating than a photo full of people that can’t be identified. Scanfest sounds awesome!
