Sunday, February 6, 2022

Time Traveling


I have been up to my eyeballs in a new project.

Several years ago I blogged a few images that my dad took on a backpacking trip to Europe in 1957. Well, those were just a handful of about 200 slides he left us from that journey through France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK.

I've always meant to do something with these photos, but until now I haven't had the time. Being trapped at home with Covid, it turns out, is good incentive! I spent all day yesterday re-editing the pictures, choosing the best ones and turning them into a photo book.

WHEW!

It's pretty much finished now, and I intend to get it printed so I can show the family when I visit in the spring. It was a challenge because I had to figure out where each picture was taken, and when they're photos of farmland or distant mountains that's not always possible. I did my best based on where they were in the slide carousel and the order in which they were scanned.

Also, the scans are not the best quality. My stepmother had them commercially done and while they'd be fine for family photos we just want to browse now and then, they're not quite up to a professional standard. They're dark, slightly blurry and uniformly crooked. I corrected them as best I could, but if we ever do a real photo book, working with a publisher -- which might be possible -- we'd have to go back to the original slides.

But it's a start and it will hopefully give everyone in the family a nice keepsake and a sense of the images' potential.


Here's an interesting mystery. This woman turned up among the slides. This picture wasn't taken in Europe -- there were a handful of images from Dad's home in Riverside, Calif., and this is one of them. I wonder who she is? Maybe his prom date, which would mean this photo is from 1955. Where is she now?

It's so funny to think of my dad as an 18- or 20-year-old, not yet at graduate school, not yet knowing my mother, not yet married and then divorced and then remarried, not yet a father. Going out on a date with some other girl, and taking photos outside the house where he grew up, which has long since been torn down. And of course he's no longer with us either.

Time flies!

(Top photo: An off-license near the tube station in West Hampstead.)

52 comments:

  1. The photo of the mystery woman is such a slice of ’50s America. Sounds like a wonderful project. We had both our families 35-mm slides professionally digitized before our move to Spain. Some great vintage images.

    Western Foods & Wine(....Express) is quite the hodgepodge.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's great that you saved the slides. So many people just throw them out.

      Delete
  2. She does look fairly young and so before he met your mother.

    The Offy looks as bad as the wine shop below where we stayed in NYC.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It does look pretty bad from the outside! I don't think I've ever been in it.

      Delete
  3. Why don't women wear their cashmere cardigans like that any more? Casually draped from the shoulders, it makes such a sexy fashion statement.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We do. You should get out more, Yorkshire!

      Delete
    2. LOL -- there you go, YP! Maybe it's just not a Yorkshire thing?

      Delete
  4. What a great project. The girl in the photo fits the 1950's perfectly. My dad took a lot of photos too but he never made it to Europe until I took him to London in 2000. And, I can't believe that was almost 22 years ago now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know -- 2000 seems like yesterday, doesn't it?!

      Delete
  5. This got me thinking, I have never seen a photo of my father, or mother, with a boyfriend or girlfriend.
    Hmmmm.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hmmmmm indeed! Maybe they threw those pictures out? I've seen a couple of random shots of one parent or another with a date, but I don't think any of them were serious boyfriends or girlfriends.

      Delete
  6. People should really label photos. Whoever she is or was, she was important to him and pretty too. The photo book is a great idea.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I really think she was probably his prom date. My stepsister or stepmother might know her name. I'll have to ask.

      Delete
  7. I went back to the older blog post, amazing photos and they remind me of your photos:)

    When mum was still alive we went through a bunch of old photos and I had her tell me the names of the people in the photos, so I have some photos that are known but still have others that I have no idea who is in the photos. I put them in an album and maybe one day my daughter will want it, or my niece. Who knows.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I did that with my mom and we tried to label some of them but I'm sure others are unlabeled still. I learned a lot about photography from my dad so I'm not surprised our eyes are similar!

      Delete
  8. I bless whoever in my late husband's family wrote who when and where on the few photos from the early part of the 20th century. Our son now has a nice little collection of photos of his relatives from two and three generations.

    My own family rarely took pictures, so it's great that yours was very much into it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, I appreciate having all our family photos.

      Delete
  9. I think that lady may have made the dress. It looks like a Simplicity pattern of the time. It would be interesting to do some detective work on the pic, via social media. She may have relatives who'd like to see it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. You're going to have quite a nice book when you finish. I loved seeing the two dogs in the last post, standing on the sidewalk waiting for their human. Animals are awesome! You have a super day, hugs, Edna B.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I would have said that picture was taken in Florida as much because of the house as the giant palm. One does wonder who that pretty lady was.
    I'd say you're making good use of your quarantine.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Wow, that's a massive palm tree.
    This is a little weird, but I was working on a genealogy tree for a friend. She had an uncle named Warren Edward "Red" Reed (1921-2003) who had lived in Riverside, California as a young man. He later moved to Canajaharie, NY. Any relationship to your Dad?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not that I'm aware of. My dad was actually born in St. Louis to Jesse and Ella (Ratliff) Reed, who were originally from Arkansas. They moved to Riverside not long after -- sometime around 1938, I believe.

      Delete
  13. That is a lovely photo mystery. It would be interesting if you could solve it. It's such a nice idea to make a book of old photos for your family. Really a project of love.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'll have to ask my stepmother and stepsister if they know who the woman is.

      Delete
  14. I love looking at old photos; a tiny piece of time caught forever. What a perfect project to keep you occupied. I should try to find my old slides and see if about getting them digitized professionally if they are still good.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Definitely -- get them digitized! I am a firm believer in saving all these old images from the past. They are time capsules, as you said.

      Delete
  15. It's interesting to sort of teleport yourself into old photos and the person -
    Were those the shoes she wanted to wear? Did she pick the purse to match?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I thought the same thing -- you can consider the planning that went into the outfit!

      Delete
  16. My parents would stash us kids at summer camp or hire a sitter while they went off on vacations. Family vacations didn't happen at our house. My dad took mainly slides and we would have slide shows sometime after. Anyway, boxes and boxes of slides that were in my sister's possession after both our parents had died. She kept them with every move except the last one. She finally gave my brother and I a last chance to take them and do something with but we both declined. Our brother sent her a thing that was supposed to digitize them but she couldn't get it to work. anyway, they all went in the trash eventually. I applaud your efforts and your skill. I hope your family enjoys the book.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well, I hate to hear about slides being discarded, but I can see how you might not have felt any attachment to them given that you didn't go on the trips.

      Delete
  17. One thing that I've learned from going through my parents pictures. Label them. (Have I actually done so? Not yet)

    It is interesting that your father hung on to the picture of the woman. You almost think that alone has to mean something. Another thing that I notice: Every time that I look at pictures from the 50s, it strikes me how 'grown up' they looked compared to the pictures of when I graduated just 20 years later.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree with you 100%, Debby. Today's graduates look older, too, but in a different way. Maybe that says more about us than them.

      Delete
    2. It is amazing how mature people looked in the '50s. I think the goal was to appear "grown up," whereas now our culture idolizes youth and everyone wants to appear younger.

      Delete
  18. What a great way to use your time during confinement! I bet your family will love having the photo books. I have dozens of old fashioned photo albums that my grandkids now love to look through.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's great that your grandkids like to look through them. Photos are a great opportunity to teach kids about their families and their past. I learned so much about my people from my grandmother and all her old photos.

      Delete
  19. Sometimes we need to be forced/encouraged to work on these projects. Don't you wish you could ask your dad about the photo? I did a massive amount of scanning for family photo books after my husband died. I never want to scan anything again!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, it DOES become exhausting after a while! I scanned a lot of my childhood photos and I know what you mean.

      Delete
  20. What a cool project! The mystery lady is lovely! She's not wearing a prom dress, but I guess this could have just been a regular date.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, maybe. You don't think she might have worn that to a prom? Too casual?

      Delete
    2. Definitely too casual (I'm pretty sure). I think a prom dress would have been the same length, but more flared out & possibly with a bit of crinoline underneath.

      Delete
  21. A few years ago, I did this same thing with a pile of pictures from the past and, like Margaret, I never want to do it again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, it's tiring, no question. But it's good to have them preserved digitally, right?

      Delete
  22. Many people do not write info on their slides so mysteries appear. You've picked out one interesting mystery.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My dad wrote notes on some of his, but of course I don't have the original slides with me, so who knows if they're labeled?

      Delete
  23. That would be an interesting book to bring out for family reunions.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If we ever have a family reunion! We're a pretty far-flung bunch.

      Delete
  24. Coincidence we both blogged about old colour slides on the same day.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Definitely has a 50's vide to it. As you know, I have more than one picture in my collection of somebody I have no idea who they are.

    I scanned some 25,000 slides that I've inherited over the years. My scanner came with a routine I can set up to somewhat process the images to remove fading, dust and scratches. But when I go to add them to a photobook like what you are doing with your dad's travels, I usually edit them with a program called Lightroom. It allows you to infinitely straighten up a picture and has more sophisticated functions to bring an old slide/picture back to life. It can even fix some blemishes like creasing or tears if not too severe and depending on what is in the background. But it is SOOOO labor intensive. It is easily possible to spend a half hour on a photo which amounts to lots of time when talking about a book full of them.

    ReplyDelete
  26. I love this. I'm doing much the same and it really is quite a walk in time, isn't it? I wonder who some of those folks are in mom and dad's pics, too -- boyfriend or girlfriend, probably no longer around. Oh, if we could just get together again for a weekend, the questions I'd ask!

    ReplyDelete