Flash to the past
(From Olney Camera Club article March 2021) Our cameras are recording devices, and when we showcase our family photos, we also preserve our stories, our history. A collection of family photos is like a patchwork quilt – an heirloom, worn with age, that can be passed on to the next generation. Here I reveal my story:
When my mum passed on, my two elder brothers delegated me as ‘family archivist’, meaning that I got to be keeper of a folder of sundry paper records, photo albums and a couple of biscuit tins full of assorted old photos and negatives. There appeared to be no order to it all.
Lesson 1:
Take care of your family history assets. Museum curators put a lot of technique and expense into this.
The albums contained stuff mostly during my lifetime but also a family treasure trove of my parents and grandparents’ historic black and white photographs. Many showed folks who I had never met – nor did I know many of their names; and a few of them were holding their own camera – it was the closest thing to Facebook we had back then.
I failed the first lesson – the biscuit tin monochrome negatives were too badly damaged by scratched emulsion and poor development to print well, but the corresponding monochrome enprints yielded clean digital camera copies needing cropping and only a little touching up. Keep your original photos – the digital images are useful now but methods of reading originals is improving with time.
From this image catalogue a selection could be added to our family tree files. My mum started researching our family tree, back in the 1980s before we had computers, visiting county records offices to plot our father’s line back six generations. My elder brothers and I have digitised this family tree, adding more detail as we revisit it. Now it connects to many other family branches in Canada and Australia.
Lesson 2:
You should consult your older relatives before the family history details get ‘erased’.
I began fitting the faces to the names; a revelation – now I was understanding the relevance of these people’s images. You can only progress so far though, and other, older family members could not help me further. I should have done this 40 years ago.
Lesson 3:
What living relatives tell you about your family may be ‘opinions’ – not facts.
Show Off Your Legacy:
If you have the space in your home, you could use family images to create a group of small or medium-sized framed pictures for wall hanging. If you use a toning effect here (eg: Selenium, Palladium) it may help the group be more cohesive. Matt finish paper is effective with monochrome prints and usually looks best with glazed frames. Gloss finish paper can be used for colour print impact but its reflective surface can be distracting. You may have to print the pictures slightly lighter than the original to show best in subdued lighting. Olney Camera Club
