I once gave a presentation on photo restoration to a local historical group.. I stood up and said,
“It’s 10 o’clock…. do you know where your photos are?” Everyone gave a chuckle because most were familiar with that old public service announcement that used to play right before the local news. But people also laughed because they thought about their own photos, sitting in shoe boxes, quietly fading into obscurity or sitting on their computer hard-drives with names such as DSC00456.jpg. Easy to fi
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Sometimes you see something visual and it just resonates with you on such a deep level that it starts the beginnings of an interest, an obsession, or even a love affair.
I was in the Catherine Couturier Gallery a couple months ago and came across a few pieces by artist Photographer Rachel Phillips, who considers herself a photographer yet uses her photography in such a unique manner via a transfer process that all her art works are one of a kind, completely unique. In her work entitled “Field Not
In the warmth of her childhood home, forty year old Kate discovers a captivating, old family photograph and a legacy emerges of a man, her great-grandfather, a poor Italian immigrant who paved the way for their close-knit family.
In Karen Malena's emotional new short story series, become immersed in the bond between Kate and her mother as they share coffee, pastries, and heartfelt stories in the coziness of her mother's kitchen.
A simple black and white photograph and my life would n
One of my blog readers recently wrote asking me about the best way to share photos with family members who are far away. She was interested in having family members help her identify people in her photos but was hesitant to put the photos in the mail, fearing they may not be returned. This is a pretty important thing to be fearful of and many of my clients have reported losing photos to well-meaning family members. My grandmother was notorious in our family for coming over while we were out of t
Part 2 of a series about capturing the joy of family events on video
Last week I introduced this series about creating videos to capture the joy of family events and special occasions like weddings, anniversaries, birthdays and holiday get-togethers. Now let’s delve a bit deep into the process by discussing the first of four main phases used in multimedia productions – concepting / script writing.
First, try to develop a concept that really captures the spirit and central theme of the event and ca
Since October is Family History Month, I was already thinking about this subject for a new blog article when a Canadian writer and film producer named Robb Lucy asked that I make a contribution to his new book. Scheduled for publication in the Spring of 2009, it is tentatively titled “Legacies aren’t for dead people – It’s about creating and really enjoying yours… now!”
Robb wanted to get additional perspectives on this specialized form of storytelling from other professional biographers, videogr
Part 3 of a series about capturing the joy of family events on video
Last week we covered the first of four phases used in creating multimedia productions to capture the joy of family events – concepting / scriptwriting. This week, I we will talk about phase two – pre-production and planning.
As Hal Landen puts it in his book titled Marketing With Digital Video, “Murphy’s Law works overtime in video production. If something can go wrong, it will. Your only defense is planning. Planning will help y
We often hear clients complain they can’t remove their photos from those old inexpensive magnetic photo albums. Those are the ones with the pre-glued pages that you just stick the photos in and slide the plastic sleeve over the outside. While those may seem fast and easy, over many years the glue will have degraded and fused the back of the photo to the photo album page itself. Trying to remove it guarantees ripping your photo.
Several years ago there was a product on the market, Un-Du, that I co
My father, Martin Elkort, is a collected and noteworthy photographer. His body of work, shot during a period of enormous possibility in our country, evokes feelings of both excitement and nostalgia in those that view and collect his photographs. Since my dad has become collectible, I’ve been to many of his shows and talked to gallery owners and collectors about his work and their own collections. The question always comes up whether I too have a photographic eye. Usually answering no, that I hav
I’m often not sure what the age range of my readership is, but probably most of you are not too young to remember the old-style accordion photo wallets that people (primarily grandmothers) used to keep in their purses before the advent of digital devices that not only make phone calls, but serve as virtual luggage for all of our digital data, including photos.
A photo wallet is a sleeve of connected plastic photo cases that usually fold up in an accordion fashion upon themselves. Sometimes they s
In January of 2008, Money Magazine wrote an article comparing 6 of the most popular scanning services. They sent 40 prints to the six different companies and rated them on cost, turnaround time and scan quality.
The top rated company was ScanCafe. ScanCafe operates out of Bangalore India so when you send photos to them, they are shipped over to India to be scanned. The images are then posted online and you are allowed to reject up to 50% of your order. After you have chosen the images you want to
I am sitting here in Houston, waiting for Hurricane Ike to arrive. It’s 9AM and he’s not expected until around midnight but I’m nervous and not quite sure what to do. Arranging things around the house, most of it seems pointless. You never really know what’s going to happen until it happens. Will we flood? Will windows break from flying tree branches or patio furniture? Nobody can say for sure. But we are lucky and out of the way of such disaster that would require evacuating.
Two weeks ago, in t
I spend a lot of time flying back and forth between Houston and Los Angeles to visit my family. The flight is 3 hours and last year I made a commitment to spend that three hour time period working on sorting, identifying and tagging all of my digital photos. By the time we take off, get our complimentary beverages, prepare for the descent, it probably works out to about 2 hours but that time I have totally dedicated to this task. I decided to focus this time on this specific task because I could
These days, many of us take photos with our phones and send them to each other via email or post them online to various photo sharing websites such as Flickr and Twitpic. I’ve also got photos on my Facebook profile and there’s some video clips of me speaking on my website. I don’t have photos of my family or my children when they were young on my iPhone or even in my wallet. I suppose I should get some in there! My husband carries a photo of me and photos of the kids taken around 20 years ago in
Last week I blogged about how I have been organizing and tagging all my digital photos during frequent 3 hour flights. I received several comments and questions from readers about what to do with those photos once they are tagged and organized into a meaningful architecture.
I find myself once again sitting on an airplane and thought I would take this time to address this issue, which is actually two different issues; how to safely store the images and how to use and share the images, rather tha
As I write this, I am sitting on a plane returning from a family reunion in California. My cousin celebrated his 70th birthday yesterday and several family members flew in for the occasion. My cousin's grandmother and my grandmother were sisters, so while I see him all the time (since he lives in the same building as my parents), his sisters and their families all live on the east coast and the only time we see each other is at weddings, funerals, and other special celebrations such as this.
Sin
My friend Maureen Taylor, aka www.maureentaylor.com The Photo Detective, just published her newest book, “The Last Muster.”
“A remarkable work of documentary history, The Last Muster is a collection of rare nineteenth-century photographic images—primarily daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and carte des visite paper photographs—of the Revolutionary War generation. This extraordinary collection of images assigns faces to an un-illustrated war and tells the stories of our nation’s founding fathers and mot
