Old negatives...

Another one of the tasks that I set myself when I retired, was to sort through the hundreds of photos that I have. So far I have made a PowerPoint presentation for my 60 th last year as well as an online album of my mother's family. The idea of this online album is that family members from all around Australia can access the photos, saving any that they wish.  I've also now got quite a few photos of my father and I will make a similar album with these photos. None of his 6 grandchildren ever knew him as he died in 1967 and of course my brother never knew his father either.

Now people of my vintage have a lot of photos in slide form and I'm no exception; I have lots of little red boxes of Agfa slides and a smaller number of yellow Kodak boxes of slides. A few years ago DD2 gave me Digital Image Copier and many of my slides have been scanned into files and stored on my computer. Now the copier is able to scan negatives but I've found that this is really only successfully done with 135 films. My mother's old camera was a 'Box Brownie' which had much larger negatives and my first camera also produced larger negatives. I made a number of enquiries about what I could do with a my collection of old negatives which seemed to have been parted from the printed images. There are a number of companies that do such scanning but their prices quoted were quite steep. My nephew's wife is a photographer by profession and she suggested I take the negatives to a Kodak or Fuji shop rather than the big laboratories.

Once such shops were in most big shopping centres...not so here these days. I did find a Kodak shop a few suburbs away and organised for 31 negatives to be scanned and put on a CD...the cost was just under $3 per neg. When I went back the next day, the assistant put the disc into one of their machines so I could look at the photos.

Probably about 2 here and walking along the Sandgate footpath

I was 'blown away' looking at old photos that I either had never seen or had seen them and forgotten about it. My parents would take photos of me on a semi regular basis to send to my Uncle in Sicily. Then there were the photos from my little first camera...such memories!

Top photo; 10 years old with my beloved cat and  then  as a 13 y/o with him

Same cat; probably 14 or 15

Don't remember this photo but it was my little first camera that took it; would have been 15

With my beloved godmother (Patrozza) and 2 of her daughters

Obviously a double exposure and it was never developed. But what glorious memories! I was 17 and wearing my much loved pants suit which was the height of fashion in 1968!!!

PS As I've been writing this post a nephew has sent me an email telling me about 'Drop box' which is apparently another way to store images and videos that can be accessed from any where. I must check that out and see how it compares to Picassa and Facebook.