Week 3 (Jan. 15-21): Favorite Photo

The prompt for Week 3 is 'Favorite Photo', and it is hard to choose just one from my collection.

Over the years I have been quite fortunate in accumulating old family photographs from a variety of sources.  Many are copies of photos held by family members, while others have come from libraries and archives, local history societies, distant relatives and heritage projects.  While the bulk of my collection are good digital scans I also have a number of original photos that I have inherited.  All my originals have been scanned for future preservation and happily shared with fellow family members.  I have also detailed who, where and when in as much detail as I can for each one - my pet hate is the anonymous photo of nobody-knows-who included in an album of family members.

One of my favourite family photos is the one below of my father Peter with his siblings and their father, Frank Walter Green.  Dad was one of 10 children and to the best of my knowledge it is the only photo of all 10 siblings together, which makes the scanned image I have even more precious.  And yes, one of the brothers does have a beer bottle balanced on his head!  That would be Ernest, known to all as Squib, the second eldest of the Green siblings.  If there are any relatives out there who have another photo of all 10 siblings together, I would love to hear from you and am happy to share copies!

Another favorite is the wedding photo of my great great grandparents James Nicholas Clark and Pricilla Veronica Mulholland.  Dating back to 1898, it is one of the oldest photographs I have from my mother's side of the family, and I am lucky to hold the original of this photo too.

Finally, there is the tinted studio photograph of my mother as a child.  Aged 5 years old, this photograph was taken to be sent to my mothers older brother James, or Jimmy, in 1947.  Jimmy was in the Merchant Navy at the time, and this photo chased him around the world before being delivered to his ship only days after he was killed in an accident in Argentina while they were picking up a load of horses to be taken to Poland.  Jimmy is buried in Argentina, and the photo was returned to his mother in an unopened letter included in his effects, making the photo even more precious.

Photos in the News

Over the years I have blogged on numerous occasions of the successes I have had searching in old newspapers for articles about my family.  I recently had another great find.

Locating a photo of an ancestor in the newspapers makes an article even more exciting.  I recently discovered that my great uncle, Alfred Edward Pummeroy, worked for a few years as a jockey, so I headed to the newspapers to see if he was mentioned in racing news.

To my delight, not only did I find several articles about his short (and not terribly successful) racing career, but I also found a photograph of him with a couple of other jockeys.

Alfred is pictured in the centre of the three standing jockeys, and it is the only image I have of him as a young man, which makes this photo from the newspapers even more special.

Caring for Your Old Photographs

Once again the question has been asked about how to best store and care for your precious old family photographs.  Especially is, like me, you have become the family repository and your store of old, sometimes antique, photographs continually grows.

The basics

• The best place to store photographs is in a cool, dry place. A cardboard box in the shed or garage is just an invitation for mice to make a nest.
  
• Avoid storing photos extreme temperatures or in extremely high or low humidity. High humidity promotes mold growth and low humidity promotes brittle photos.
• Avoid storing photos in direct light - this will fade the images.  Make a good copy to frame and display.
  
• Avoid magnetic or glue photo albums - these will discolor and ultimately destroy your photos.
  

Photo boxes are a popular way to store family photographs, and they are available from many camera shops and other stores. The best storage is an archival safe box - which means the photo box, album, sleeve, etc that you use is lignin-free, acid-free, PVC-free and is neutral pH to prevent the degradation of your photos.  Even when you are using archival safe photo boxes, however, there are ways to further safe guard your precious photographs.

• Do not over fill the photo box. Stuffing “just one more” into the box risks scratching or tearing of your photo.
• Do not under fill your photo box either. Under filling a box encourages bowing of the photographs.  Avoid this by using the correct size box and use a spacer if needed.
• Store similar sized photos together. This prevents excessive shifting that could scratch your photographs.
• Use archival photo sleeves to further protect your oldest or damaged photographs. Sleeves come in a variety of sizes.  Place only one photo in a sleeve and use a sleeve that is slightly larger than the photograph.  You do not want the edges of your photo extending beyond the sleeve.
• Over-sized photos?  Store in an appropriately sized flat box. Archival photo boxes come in a variety of sizes.
• Remember when you are handling your photographs, make sure your work area is clean and dry and your hands are free of any lotions or oils.

Make sure you disaster plan.  Sometimes the unimaginable happens and somehow your precious photos are damaged or destroyed.  A little disaster planning can prevent their complete loss.

• Have copies made and store them off-site.  Distribute copies among other family members for safe keeping.
• Digitize photographs and back them up in cloud storage and/or on flash drive.  Always have backups of anything precious.
• This can apply to other physical items.  Take good photos of other precious items and heirlooms.  If Great Great Grandma's vase gets broken or her brooch is lost or stolen, at least you will have good photos of them.  
• Remember to record the 'who/what/when/where/why' in as much detail as you can.  It is all very well if you know this bundle of photographs were taken during your parents honeymoon at Hall's Gap in 1968 - but do your children and grandchildren know?  Will those details be handed down to whoever inherits your photo collection? 

 A few simple steps can help protect and preserve your old photos for generations to come.

Caring for Old Photographs

One question I am often asked is how to best store and care for old family photographs.  It is a challenge many family historians face - we become the family repository (if we are lucky) and our store of old,sometimes antique, photographs grows.

So here are the basics.

• The best place to store photographs is in a cool, dry place. Attics, sheds and basements are not good places to store your photographs.  A cardboard box in the shed or garage is just an invitation for mice to make a nest.
  
• Avoid storing photos extreme temperatures or in extremely high or low humidity. High humidity promotes mold growth and low humidity promotes brittle photos.
• Avoid storing photos in direct light - this will fade the images.
• Avoid magnetic or glue photo albums - these will discolor and ultimately destroy your photos.
  

The best storage is an archival safe box - but what does “archival safe” mean when it comes to storing your photographs? Archival safe means the photo box, album, sleeve, etc is lignin-free, acid-free, PVC-free and has a neutral pH to prevent the degradation of your photos.

Photo boxes are a popular way to store family photographs, and they are available from many camera shops and other stores. Even when you are using archival safe photo boxes, however, there are ways to further safe guard your precious photographs.

• Do not over fill the photo box. Stuffing “just one more” into the box risks scratching or tearing of your photo.
• Do not under fill your photo box either. Under filling a box encourages bowing of the photographs.  Avoid this by using the correct size box or use a spacer to if needed.
• Store similar sized photos together. This prevents excessive shifting that could scratch your photographs.
• Use archival photo sleeves to further protect your oldest or damaged photographs. Sleeves come in a variety of sizes.  Place only one photo in a sleeve and use a sleeve that is slightly larger than the photograph.  You do not want the edges of your photo extending beyond the sleeve.
• Over-sized photos?  Store in an appropriately sized flat box. Archival photo boxes come in a variety of sizes.
• Remember when you are handling your photographs, make sure your work area is clean and dry and your hands are free of any lotions or oils.

Disaster plan.  Sometimes the unimaginable happens and a natural disaster destroys your precious heirlooms.  A little disaster planning can prevent the loss of all your precious photos.

• Have copies made and store them off-site.  Distribute copies among other family members for safe keeping.
• Digitize photographs and back them up in cloud storage and/or on flash drive.  Always have backups of anything precious.
• This can apply to other physical items.  Take good photos of other precious items and heirlooms.  If Great Great Grandma's vase gets broken or her brooch is lost or stolen, at least you will have good photos of them.  
• Remember to record the 'who/what/when/where/why' in as much detail as you can.  It is all very well if you know this bundle of photographs were taken during your parents honeymoon at Hall's Gap in 1968 - but do your children and grandchildren know?  Will those details be handed down to whoever inherits your photo collection?  One of my 'lockdown projects' in the last few years as been to create a contents list for each photo box I own, and to go through all my digital photos adding details to the photo title.
  

 

Photo Restoration

Now available free online for Campaspe Library members via our subscription to Libby eMagazines is a new magazine on Photo Restoration.  Members are able to read any of our online magazines through the Libby app easily on their computer, laptop or Android or Apple device.

This new magazine provides easy to follow expert advice on how to bring your old photos back to life: – best options for scan settings, image resolution and re-sizing; – how to easily use photo editing software for Colour correction, Contrast adjustment, Sharpening, Dust and scratch removal, Clone stamp and Healing brush; – identify when it’s better to use professional restoration services; – best ways to store, organise, share and display your restored images. High quality book design and insightful case studies with sample images to provide step by step fixes for the most common blemishes in old photographs.

Inside this issue :  

• Photo Restoration
• Why digitise your photos?
• Scanning
• Software for photo restoration
• Preparing images for retouching
• Precautions when cropping
• Global adjustments
• Localised adjustments
• Editing tips
• Step-by-step restoration
• When to call the professionals
• What to do with your restored images

 Take a look at the range of e-magazines, e-books and e-audiobooks available now.

An Exciting Find

It is always so exciting to receive a previously unseen document or photograph from a distant relative, and this week I been lucky enough to discover such a gift.  

Charles Cock was the husband of my great grandaunt Sarah Green.  He was born in Totham, Essex about 1812 and died in West Mersea, Essex 14 August 1896.  He and Sarah married in Sarah's home village Fordham, Essex 21 November 1843.

Early photographs of our ancestors are so often rare and precious, and I am extremely happy to have the above photo of Charles.  I don't know exactly when it was taken, although I presume later in his life, and it is possibly cropped from a larger image.

If anyone out there knows more about this photo, I would be delighted to hear from you and am always happy to share information.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 10 - Family Photo

Over the years I have been quite fortunate in accumulating old family photographs from a variety of sources.  Many are copies of photos held by family members, while others have come from libraries and archives, local history societies, distant relatives and heritage projects.  While the bulk of my collection are good digital scans I also have a number of original photos that I have inherited.  All my originals have been scanned for future preservation and happily shared with fellow family members.  I have also detailed who, where and when in as much detail as I can for each one - my pet hate is the anonymous photo of nobody-knows-who included in an album of family members.

One of my favourite family photos is the one above of my father Peter with his siblings and their father, Frank Walter Green.  Dad was one of 10 children and to the best of my knowledge it is the only photo of all 10 siblings together, which makes the scanned image I have even more precious.  And yes, one of the brothers does have a beer bottle balanced on his head!  That would be Ernest, known to all as Squib, the second eldest of the Green siblings.  If there are any relatives out there who have another photo of all 10 siblings together, I would love to hear from you and am happy to share copies!

Other favourite family photos include a few very old portrait photos from my fathers family back in England.  Again, I only have digital copies that I have printed out, but a good digital copy is still very worth having.

Isobelle Mary Green (nee Argent)

Sarah Jane Pike (nee Hart)

From my mother's family, too, I have a few favourites.  Below is a scan of a mock gambling scene featuring my great grandfather James Nicholas Clark, the original given to me by my grandmother many years ago.

James Nicholas Clark

Having a photo of relatives, especially those who died before I was born, helps bring them to life for me and I will always consider myself fortunate to have the photos and scans that I have collected over the years.

A New Feature At FamilySearch

Behind every photo is a story. You can now record that story with the photos of your family that you upload to FamilySearch on both the FamilySearch.org website and the FamilySearch apps.

To add audio, first go to your family photos by clicking the Memories tab at the top of the FamilySearch screen. Or, in the Family Tree, you can click an ancestor’s name and go to the person’s details page. Then choose Memories to see photos for that particular family member.

Next, add a new photo or click on one you want to add audio to. (You will only be able to add audio to those photos you have uploaded to FamilySearch.org.) You will notice a microphone below the photo with the words Record a Memory. After you click the words, an audio recording screen will appear. Click the blue microphone to start talking, and record up to five minutes for that photo.

This is a quick and easy way to record the stories and memories that make so many of our family photos so special, and share them with friends and relatives.

Portrait Detective

Do you have treasured family photos whose date your do not know?  Portrait Detective is a unique image-dating tool developed by Inside History and the State Library of New South Wales to help you accurately interpret and decode historic images, dating your photos and helping you solve the mystery of who they feature.

Drawing on the research of historian and portrait-dating expert Margot Riley, Portrait Detective brings together a selection of 100 images of Australian people sourced from the Library’s collections, dating from 1788 to 1955.  They cover a range of media such as oil paintings, water colours, drawings, miniatures, silhouettes, engravings and photographs, and all depict Australians from a variety of eras, classes, social contexts and walks of life.

Each image in the timeline has been chosen because its date and provenance is known, so you can see at a glance the changing styles of portraiture, art, dress and personal grooming over time.
Arranged in a chronological timeline, these images form an authoritative and historically accurate record and reference resource of the changing appearance of men, women and children in New South Wales over time.  As you browse through the timeline you can click on an individual image to learn more about:

• the subject
• the artist or photographer who created it
• the provenance
• the medium
• background details, and more.

There is also the Men's Style Guide and Women's Style Guide which explores changes in fashion and grooming through time.  The men's style guide explores coats, shirts, neckties, trousers, and hair and beard styles.  The women's style guide explores the bodice, neckline, sleeves, accessories and hair.

Using Margot’s expertise in dress and photographic history to decode the visual evidence in every image, Portrait Detective will equip you with specialised visual analysis skills to accurately interpret and date historical images of your own.

Historic England

Historic England has been hard at work adding new collections to their online resources.  Below are a few of their recent additions.

Topical Press Agency Medical Collection.

A remarkable collection of more than 4,000 medical images, discovered deep within the vaults of the Historic England Archive.  The images document health care from 1938 to 1943, and detail wartime hospital staff, patients, procedures and practices.  The photographs in the collection are very well annotated, providing great insight into medical treatments during the Second World War. They feature hospitals and practices all around the country, from Liverpool to London. 

Maurice Barley Collection

Professor Maurice Willmore Barley (1909-1991) was born and brought up in Lincoln. After training as a teacher, he spent much of his professional life in academia. He worked at Hull University before moving to Nottingham in 1946, ultimately becoming the University’s first Professor of Archaeology in 1971.
Whilst at Nottingham he became an authority on English domestic and farmhouse architecture. He wrote a number of books on this subject of vernacular architecture, notably ‘The English Farmhouse and Cottage’ (1961).
The collection of over 5,000 prints and negatives, dates from the 1940s onwards. It reflects Barley’s interest in vernacular buildings, together with his passion for local history. The contents are heavily focussed on the vernacular houses and farmsteads of the East Midlands, some capturing buildings shortly before demolition. Thus far 1300 negatives, approximately a quarter of the collection, has been digitized.

The J J Samuels Collection

The archive has recently finished cataloguing a collection of photographs from Julian Joseph Samuels Ltd showing a variety of London streets and landmarks during the first half of the 20th century. The collection is focussed largely on Westminster and the City of London.  Tourist hotspots like Trafalgar Square and London Zoo feature alongside important legal and religious buildings like Lincolns Inn and St Paul's Cathedral.
The photographs were taken by, or possibly for, Julian Joseph Samuels, a postcard dealer based in Westminster. Born in London in 1883, Julian Joseph was one of the six children of Emmanuel Isaac Samuels and his wife Maria. According to census records he was educated at Chatham House School in Ramsgate, Kent before becoming a postcard dealer in the first decade of the 20th century.
During his career Samuels occupied premises along the Strand in Westminster as well as on Piccadilly and Regent Street.

Moving House and finding (more) Treasures

Well, its done.  I have sold the old family home and moved to my new house.  There are boxes everywhere and I feel like it will take me MONTHS to unpack and settle in, but I haved moved house.  Closing the door on the old family home for the last time was quite an emotional experience - I was only 2.5 years old when my family moved in, and after several years away I moved back to care for my parents in their last years, so there are a lot of memories in that house.
I've posted a few times about finding treasures in the cleanout, many hidden amongst piles of rubbish and the final packup was no different.  It was amazing finding things that had fallen behind wardrobes and bookcases years ago or were stashed in the back of a drawer or under a bed and never recovered.  Given that I have been researching the family history since I was 16 years old, and have always been interested in my parents stories of their childhood, how some of these things were never mentioned, much less produced, escapes me.  I think my parents had forgotten about many of these treasures themselves.

A couple of examples.  The first was found in a pile of other papers - many equally fascinating and unseen before by me  - hidden in the linen cupboard behind some old sheets. Apparently my dad did some running while he was a lad at school - this certificate below dates from 1935, and dad would have been 9 years old at the time.

The second was an even more unlikely find.  It was only discovered when the removalists were loading up my furniture to take it to the new house.  This colored print of my father was taken from a photograph from when he enlisted in the Air Force, during World War 2.  It is hand colored on cardboard - and has spent who-knows-how-long lying behind a wardrobe in my parents bedroom.  Neither my sister or I can recall ever seeing it, although we are both familiar with the photo from which it is taken, and how or when it was created I have no idea.

While I am grateful I have these treasures now, I would have loved to have seen them when my parents were alive.  There are so many questions I have - and obviously stories I missed out on.

Collage : The London Picture Archive

Collage: The London Picture Archive offers access to a wealth of photographs, prints, drawings and posters from London, available via an interactive map showing the locations that they depict.  This database of pictures not only includes images of famous landmarks, but ordinary streets and residential buildings that are no longer in existence.

Managed by London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), it provides free online access to over 250,000 images of London from the collections at LMA and Guildhall Art Gallery.  The whole of Greater London is covered, as are the adjoining counties, and the images provide an extraordinary record of London and its people from the fifteenth century to the present day. Some of the many highlights include photographs of Victorian London; the sixteenth century ‘Agas’ map of London; Hollar’s stunning panorama from 1647; beautifully designed twentieth century posters for London’s tramways; the Cross and Tibbs photographs of Second World War damage to the City of London and the collections formerly held at the Guildhall Print Room.

The site regularly adds new content from the LMA collections - they estimate that there are around 2 million photos, prints, drawings and maps in their strong rooms. So, if you can’t find what you’re looking, check back soon!

Historic Victoria Photographs online at the State Library of Victoria

The State Library of Victoria has begun an ambitious new project digitising a huge collection of photographs from the 1970s.  Taken by volunteers from a group called the Committee for Urban Action (CUA), the collection comprises over 2000 reels of 35mm film, totalling over 70,000 photographs. 

The CUA were concerned by what they saw as the destruction of Victoria’s building heritage, and sought to preserve on film the streetscapes of inner-city Melbourne and regional towns in Victoria.  On average each town or suburb had approximately 800 photos taken during the project.  Their collection of film was donated to the State Library in 1977, where it has sat in storage for over 40 years.

The SLV’s 2014 Annual Appeal raised funds to make this collection more accessible to the public. The pilot project has seen the digitisation of 3000 images from the collection, focusing on streetscapes from inner-city Fitzroy and the regional town of Castlemaine.

Hargraves Street, Castlemaine, from Lyttleton Street to Templeton Street, west side. From the CUA collection

Cornish Memory

Do you have Cornish ancestors?  cornishmemory.com was created by the Azook Community Interest Company to help museums, heritage organisations and private collectors improve access to the film, audio and photographic heritage that they hold.
Azook's vision was to develop a web site enabling anyone to search, view and listen to archive content. With support from the Heritage Lottery Fund, through a project called 'Out of the Box', cornishmemory.com was created. Oral history recordings belonging to community groups became the very first collections to go on line.  The rest of the collection was acquired through a large range of formats, including VHS, U-matic and Hi8 decks, 8mm and 16mm cine film converters, reel to reel, cassette, and DAT decks, MiniDisc and more.  Using state-of-the-art technology, this range of older and obsolete formats has been converted into digital media.
As news of the project is spread, more museums and private collectors are becoming aware of the online archive and choosing to share their collections with the public through cornishmemory.com. As time goes by the project is expected to continue to expand.  The archive currently contains over 31,000 items.
The site even features an interactive map which allows you to zoom and click to see items which have had locations added to them, although it is noted that not all items have locations attached to them.  You can also perform a specific search or browse the collection to see what is there.

Save Your Photos Day

Can you imagine losing your treasured family photos, videos and other documents? In the digital age that we live in, it doesn't just take a natural disaster to wipe our your photo library. A crashed hard drive or broken smart phone can also result in instant loss of treasured memories.

How safe are your photos and other treasures?  How prepared are you for a fire, flood or other catastrophe??  How often do you back up your digital photos - and how safe are your backups??  The Save Your Photos website has hints and tips for you.

On Save Your Photos Day consider how you can better preserve, backup and share your family's photographs, both physical and digital, and make sure they are preserved for future generations.

Britain From Above

Launched in June 2006, Britain from Above presents the unique Aerofilms collection of aerial photographs, providing access to scans of glass prints and negatives drawn from the collection from 1919-2006. You can register (registration is free) to zoom into these amazing pictures, identify unlocated images, and share memories.  The collection is varied and includes urban, suburban, rural, coastal and industrial scenes, providing important evidence for understanding and managing the built and natural environments.
Over 7,700 new aerial photographs have been made available to view in the past few months, including over 1,500 snaps of Welsh cities such as Cardiff and Swansea.This brings the collection up to over 69,000 images.

Photo London

PhotoLondon is a database of 19th Century Photographers and Allied Trades in London: 1841-1901.  The site has compiled a database of approximately 9,000 biographical entries on photographic companies and the people who worked within the photographic industry in London during the 19th century.
Read about pioneering photographers such as Antoine Claudet, Camille Silvy and Oscar Rejlander and less well known figures such as Walston Caselton, and the sisters Marion, Jane and Anna Dixon.

Historic Irish Photographs

The National Library of Ireland has begun to put some of their historic photographs online via the Google Cultural Institute. The purpose of the initiative is to increase the exposure of these photographs to the general public. Currently, there are three online exhibits: Witness to War; Dubliners - The Photographs of JJ Clarke; Power and Privilege – The Big House in Ireland. The National Library of Ireland’s photographic collection consists of some 5.3 million images. It is expected the online collection, although currently small, will grow over time. Access is free.

Green family of Fordham, Essex

Pictured are 4 generations of the Green family of Fordham in Essex.  Left to right they are : Mary Ann Green (1830-1915), her son Walter P. Green, (1857-1942).  Seated on his right is his daughter Constance (1882-1957).  The baby is not named but I believe she is Constance's daughter Rachel and that the photo was taken around 1910.

Dating old Photographs

The Roger Vaughan Picture Library provides a guide with a number of links to help date old photographs, with advice to determine what decade is a photograph from using the changes of the designs on the back and  fashion changes over time.  The site also covers types of photographs and links to online photograph databases as well as local trade directories.