Scanning the Past
- StephAnne
- Aug 1, 2022
- 3 min read
I recently completed a large photo scanning project that included photographs from my own collection as well as my parents' various collections. Having been obsessed with family photographs since I was in high school, I did not necessarily expect to run across anything "new." I thought I had seen everything.
Happily, I was wrong. I found several photos that I had not seen before, three of which I have included in this post. For instance, the above picture is a photograph of my mom, brother, and me on the beach at Ocean Shores, Washington in 1965. Ocean Shores is still a popular vacation town along the Pacific Coast of Washington about two hours west of Seattle. The photo was taken when I was not even a year old on a weekend road trip with my maternal grandparents.
My mom tells me that this picture captures my first encounter with the Pacific Ocean. It's not the greatest photograph in terms of quality even after my scanner enhanced it, but I was delighted to "find" this photograph! Being a lover of nature, born and bred PNWer, and still to this day combing the beaches of Puget Sound, this picture really grounds me. It may sound strange, but this little beat up photograph reminds me not just how rooted my family is in the great Pacific Northwest, but how rooted I am. It's a nice feeling.
Another picture that I do not recall seeing before I began my scanning project is the one of my dad and his father Pete. Grandpa Pete died in February of1959 at the age of 52 after a stroke (and before my parents met).
Unfortunately, we do not have many good photographs of Grandpa Pete. He worked as a welder at Bethlehem Steel for 32 years before his death. He was the one they would send in to handle work that required a tight squeeze because of his small size. To do this work, I can't imagine he was faint of heart, and in this picture, I see that "can do" determination in him. He was reportedly a very nice man, much like my dad.
I like this picture because it shows father and son outside the back of their Renton Hill home. The window behind them was my dad's bedroom where he grew up and where he continued to live until he was drafted into the Army and left for training in early 1960. The basement was also where Grandpa made his wine!
A third photo that I "discovered" because of my scanning project is a picture of my mom as a teenager trying on her first ever glasses in 1956 in Yakima, Washington.
This is such a fun picture with her looking up at the sky and laughing. (I've cut out the background because the photo was damaged.) I would love to know what she was saying. Whatever was said at the time, it resulted in a joyful image that makes me smile all these years later.
Another fun aspect of this photograph is knowing that my mom made the skirt she was wearing. In fact, she made a lot of her own clothes in high school and for many years after. She learned to sew at age 11 from a friend's mother who held a summer sewing class for the neighborhood girls. She tells me that her seamstress days were born out of necessity. If she wanted stylish clothes to wear to school, she had to make them herself. My grandma aided in this effort by assuring that my mom had the supplies needed to get the job done.
It's not often that you are given a glimpse of your mom as a happy-go-lucky girl. Or perhaps we just don't ever take the time to see and recognize the youthful spirit that still resides in all our moms. This picture is a good reminder to look a little deeper.
If you are wondering about the details of my photo scanning project, it took several months working on weekends and with long gaps in time. The project involved scanning and organizing thousands of photographs. In the end, the photos are all categorized as much as possible by event and by year or sometimes by decade, and they are all safely stored digitally on computers, external drives and in the cloud.
In terms of accessibility and usability of family photos, scanning is a game changer. We have all enjoyed having access to these photo collections online, and many great conversations have started about individual photos and events that were long ago forgotten. Next up for scanning is a bin of my parents' old scrapbook items and documents. I'm sure I'll be finding good stuff to write about in that bin, so stay tuned.
Note: I used an Epson Fast Foto FF-640. I love this scanner!
