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[Fwd: [LAORLEAN-L] Old Photos and Papers]



Hi Folks,

Here is an interesting story about one person and her photos.  She
learned
so much, but found out some archives die to lack of funding......

Sharon Centanne

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [LAORLEAN-L] Old Photos and Papers
Resent-Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 18:44:46 -0600
Resent-From: LAORLEAN-L@rootsweb.com
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 20:44:44 EDT
From: CFitzp@aol.com
Reply-To: LAORLEAN-L@rootsweb.com
To: LAORLEAN-L@rootsweb.com

Hi,

This is a subject near and dear to my heart.

There are a couple of things you can do with old photos.  The first one
is
scan them using Micrographix Photo Editor, Adobe Photoshop, or one of
the
common photo editors.  Some of the programs have an autocorrect feature
which
with one click can optimize the brightness and contrast of your photo
immediately.  You can get photo quality paper at any computer store, and
print multiple copies of the corrected picture.  If you don't have a
scanner,
you can bring them to any Motophoto or one hour processing lab, and get
them
back either in electronic format or they can print copies of them for
you.

With old pictures, there was usually a little developer left in the
photo
after it was processed and dried.  As a result, the photo will continue
to
develop over the years, until it is almost complettely black.  Your new
scanned and corrected photo might actually be as valuable as the
original.
In the meantime, you should put the original somewhere safe, in an
acid-free
plastic sleeve, and keep it from sunlight.

I processed an old photo I received from a distant cousin udring my trip
to
Ireland last year.  All he knew about it was that one of the men was his
uncle, who had gone to Canada to work for the railroad.

When I autocorrected the photo, at first glance, I was able to bring out
handwriting on the photo which said the name and address in Winnipeg
where
this uncle lived.  In addition, I was able to determine that he worked
for
the Canadian Pacific Railroad.  By measuring the shadows in the photo, I
was
able to determine the day in the year and the time of day that the photo
was
taken.  In addition, I could tell which person was the conductor, the
assistant conductor, and the telegraph operators (the one on duty and
teh one
off duty).  The only thing, unfortuantely, I could not do was tell you
which
one was the uncle.

BTW, I called and wrote the Canadian Pacific Railroad to see if they had
an
archive where they could find the photo and verify the date and time it
was
taken.  I was hoping to offer this service to the genealogy community to
show
people how to analyze old photos.  Alas, they have had cutbacks so that
they
no longer support their archives!

I was also able to preserve a sheepskin will of my cousin's great
grandmother.  But that's a story for another time.

Colleen

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