Some people were asking me lately about my Family Album project. For those who are not familiar with it, about 6-7 years ago I started scanning some of the old photos and slides from our family. It started with several hundred black and white prints that my dad photographed, developed and printed. Most of these were of our immediate family. I also had several hundred slides that I had taken over the years as well. When I first started the project, it was meant as a Christmas present to everyone in the family . . their own set of digital images.
Well, in the following years this project has continued to mature . . and get bigger. What started as maybe 200 images that first year has grown into roughly 35,000 images today. That number is correct: 35,000. With weddings, beach trips, my brother Craig's very large collection of negatives over the past 25 years, the discovery of my dad's old black and white negatives (about 4000), and all kinds of other stray groups of images, the Updegrove Family Album is huge.
What makes it nice are three things: 1) everyone in the family has their own dedicated hard drive with all the images stored on it, that way if there is ever a fire, we will never lose our family photos; 2) the photos are all keyworded by name(s) and/or events and are indexed into galleries . . if I want to pull up every photo with my mom in it, I just click on her name in the index and there they all are; and 3) I have had a built in Christmas present decided every year for the past 6-7 years. Throughout the year I continue to scan, or in some cases re-scan, old images; plus add newer digital images to the collection. On average I probably add about 4000 images each year. That number will probably soon slow down though as we reach our threshold of old images. At Christmas everyone gets their update with a Merry Christmas from me.
Anyhow, I am including a few images of my folks here, taken right about the time they were dating each other.
No comments:
Post a Comment