Hobbies Building A Future For Family Memories By Kate McLelland
I recently inherited several boxes of family photographs, with images dating from Victorian times - when photography was in its infancy - right up to the first decade of the new millennium. Some pictures were stored carefully in albums but others were roughly crammed into folders and envelopes. Unsurprisingly, some of the older items were beginning to show signs of deterioration, including rips, stains and tiny spots of mould. While I felt very privileged to be the keeper of this important archive, it was a reminder that my own family snaps and VHS tapes were packed in the loft: all in danger of going the same way as my newly-acquired collection. After taking stock of all this precious material - which documented over 100 years of my family’s history - it occurred to me that I had a responsibility to preserve it for future generations. PRESERVING FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHS When it comes to the future of a family photo collection you are faced with a straightforward choice: either divide the photographs up between a
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select group of relatives, or digitise the entire archive so it can be enjoyed by everyone. While the first option is quick and simple, it’s not entirely satisfactory. Unless the collection includes duplicate images, no-one will hold a complete set of family photos. There is also a chance that in future someone will throw out their part of the collection because they no longer have space to keep it. Converting hard copy photos to digital images may involve a lot of work, but it ensures that the archive will be passed on from generation to generation. Restoring and digitising photographic images can also become an enjoyable hobby: there’s great satisfaction in transforming faded, mouldspotted and torn pictures into images that look as fresh as the day they emerged from the darkroom. If you decide to digitise, you will need a computer with enough disk space to store the photographic files you are creating. You’ll also need some kind of photo editing software. According to the magazine What Digital Camera?, there are several good image
manipulation packages that are completely free to download. Top of their list is the oddlynamed Gimp, which works like a basic version of the industry-standard software Photoshop. Gimp allows you to do everything from cropping and resizing to altering exposure and colour balance. It also has the same invaluable ‘clone tool’ as Photoshop, which allows you to heal the spoiled parts of a photo by copying an undamaged area over the damaged spot. CONVERTING YOUR SLIDES During the 1960s and 70s a craze for slide photography meant that many amateur snappers temporarily stopped taking conventional photos. If you have boxes of slides that you need to convert to digital files, you will need an additional piece of equipment. Slide scanners start at around £16 (for a device that can be used together with a smartphone), while standalone scanners can cost up to £125. VHS VIDEOS TO DVD I had a shock recently when someone told me that analogue videos and home movies are susceptible to the same