Showing posts with label family archive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family archive. Show all posts

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Organising those summer snapshots


Source :wikipedia
So you are back from the Christmas holidays with a pile of snaps....

Hopefully you have downloaded them onto your computer and backed them up in the cloud or elsewhere.   And you filed them so you can easily find them?  Maybe you haven't? Are they still sitting on the camera?.

Whoops!.......

Well its the new year, there is no time like the present to get organised!

There are many different ways of organising your digitized images. Our personal collection of digitized images consists of scanned negatives,slides and photos as well as digital photos, videos, and movies plus we have music sound recordings. We chose to place our digital data into folders based on the date they were taken/ recorded, then into sub-folders based on subject. The date folders are named based on the year and month they were taken. Our file folder notations look like this:-



201401
201402
201412
201501
  
2014 indicates the year and the suffix  01, 02 and 03 indicates the month - January, February, March etc.Using a number based system like this means that the files will automatically sort in chronological order.

Within each date folder individual images, recordings and movies are sorted into sub-folders which are given topic or event names based on their subject matter, for example: Johns birthday, Beach trip, Flowers in the garden.

This system allows us to continue to add to it using the same notation. As we scan older images they can slot in at earlier dates....newer images under later dates....

How do you organize your digital images and data?  Share your ideas under comments....
  

Monday, August 18, 2014

Photo preservation and digital restoration references


On the 18th of August I gave a talk to the Wellington Southern Bays Historical Society in Island Bay about Photo preservation and digital restoration.  I thought it might be useful if  I put all the references I gave out in the talk in one place:

Where to get archival storage boxes and enclosures in NZ

Port Nicholson Packaging in Petone:

http://www.pnp.co.nz/

Conservation supplies in Havelock North

http://www.conservationsupplies.co.nz/

General archiving information

The practical archivist blog has useful information about archiving and sorting your family photos and heritage items

http://practicalarchivist.com/

Both archives NZ and TePapa have information on their sites about sorting and looking after photographs


Useful references for dating photographs

For photographic processes  http://www.graphicsatlas.org/

Also Gawain Weavers' site contains a very useful chart which you can use to help identify the photographic processes employed in 19th Century Photographic prints

http://gawainweaver.com/processID

For NZ photographers since 1840 - the photographic database link is:
RogerVaughan  updated reference to this site 
http://www.cartes.freeuk.com/dec/dated.htm
Some links on clothing styles and fashions
http://www.fashion-era.com/Dating_Costume_History_Pictures/how_to_date_photographs_top.htm

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Reproducing a water colour

A while ago I was asked by a couple to reproduce two beautiful original watercolour paintings. The paintings were painted of their daughters by an elderly Aunt.  One of the daughters, who now lives overseas, had asked for a copy of the paintings that she remembered as a young girl.

As an artist, I think it is important to reproduce colours accurately, something that was quite hard to do years ago when colour print technology was limited. 

Fortunately the watercolour originals were in beautiful condition.  I chose an archival matt paper ideal for art reproductions that resembled the original watercolour paper in its colouring and subtle texture. As I have a fully calibrated scanner, computer screen and printer I was able to accurately match the printed colours to the original watercolour.  The prints were reproduced using my  beautiful high resolution Epson Stylus Pro 3800 printer, which has archival inks. The family were really pleased with the end result.  As a bonus the family now have digitised archival copies of the original artworks which they can share.




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