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Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Connecting With My Past

This week, I got a small parcel in the mail.  It's always exciting to get unexpected surprises, but this turned out to be the best present I may have ever received.  You see, the package contained CDs of digitized images of all of my Dad's old slides.  It turns out that my brother Wolfgang, the handsome little fellow with the vest on, had taken the many boxes of slides (almost 3,000 images) and scanned them into his computer, over the period of several weeks, so that he could digitize all of our family images and then he sent a set of the disks to each of his sibs.

The timing is fabulous since as you may know from recent posts, I have just started using Lightroom and I'm in the process of organizing all of my images.  I can't tell you how thrilled I am to have all of these images, dating back to the late 50s, of my brothers and I growing up. The pictures date back to shortly after my parents and three oldest brothers arrived from Germany, through to the mid 80s.

And so this week, I'm taking a trip down memory lane, to a shot of my four brothers with me, their baby sister.  Yes, I'm the youngest of five and the only girl.  And to make life even more interesting, when I was four my aunt and my cousin Karl came to live with us so from that point on I essentially had five older brothers, two moms and my dad!

I'm not sure what the occasion is in this picture...perhaps there wasn't one, because I know that Mom would have us dress up for family photos now and then 'just because'.

I didn't have to do much to get that vintage feel in these images LOL.  I added a layer of Kim Klassen's 'Daisy' texture (from her new Downton Abbey Collection) at soft light, using a 75% opacity, and then brushed most of that off of our faces, leaving a soft vignette around the outside of the image.  I also decided to add the vintage frame to the image since the slides, and therefore the digital images, were missing that.

In this second image, probably taken about a year later, we have the five of us again.  This may actually be my favourite picture of the five of us!  Again I added a bit of a texture (Isobel, from the same collection).  As with the other image, I used a soft light blend mode and removed most of the texture from our faces before adding the frame.

It's going to take me some time to get through all of these photos and add keywords, etc. but as I'm sure you can imagine, it is going to be a labour of love!

Linking up with Our World TuesdayTexture TuesdaySweet Shot Tuesday and Photo Art Friday.

45 comments:

  1. This is so very cool! My sister has all our family slides with the intentions of doing this...I hope she shares ;) How wonderful to be the only girl with all those 'big brothers' to watch over you!!

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    1. Thanks Danielle. It is pretty neat having all these big brothers. I have to say though, when I was pregant I prayed for a son (and got him!) because I didn't know how I'd ever be able to raise a girl LOL

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  2. What wonderful pictures—and how wonderful to have them in your possession! All the sets of blue eyes in that second picture really stand out!

    Happy Tuesday, friend. ☺

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  3. What a great gift to the family. I should try and do that but OMG what a herculean task.

    I love the way you were all dressed up. No one does that anymore and something is lost with everyone always looking so casual.

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    1. Thanks Roberta. You're so right. It's really special to see us all dressed up. Of course we have the casual shots from camping, etc. but like you say it's nice to see everyone dressed up now and again.

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  4. Great photos!! Boom & Gary of the Vermilon River, Canada.

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  5. What FANTASTIC news, Linda, and such a treasure trove to have all these images so readily to hand (and heart)! Your brother deserves a *medal* for all that hard work & archiving tenacity. If only more families had such dedicated memory-keepers ;>]]

    Enjoy every moment along Memory Lane!

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    1. Thank you and yes it is. I can only imagine how long it took my brother to do all this. Like you say, he deserves a medal!

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  6. How special these are...and what sweet memories will unfold as you edit them. Have fun reliving all these sweet photos.

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    1. You're absolutely right Deanna. Not to mention the chuckles at some of the funny clothes and hair!

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  7. Way cool that your brother has done this. I seem to be the family archivist and I get to it in bits and pieces. Need more hours in a day...
    It is great to have the pictures, memories and family history.

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    1. You are so right. We are so lucky to have these treasures of our past and now to have them so easily accessible is just so incredible!

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  8. (Hi I'm visiting you from Our World Tuesday and would love to have you visit my world post ;-). What a fabulous gift your brother has given to you and your family. That is a lot of work but oh so valuable and treasured I'm sure.

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    1. Yes, an incredible amount of work, but it will be treasured! We're so grateful my brother took the time to do this for all of us!

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  9. How wonderful to have all of those pictures. I have several boxes. Would love to have them digital!! Great pics.

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    1. Yes Lynda, we're so grateful! I can't imagine scanning slides, one at a time...such a huge time commitment! Maybe if you start working on yours a little at a time it won't be so bad.

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  10. Such absolutely wonderful images! And what a treasure to have! There seems to be such genuine joy in both pictures - not just grinning for the camera, but truly being happy together... And softly beautiful, low-key editing, so perfectly supplementing that atmosphere...congratulations! ;)

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    1. Thanks Anna. We certainly were a happy bunch! And yes, such an incredible treasure to have.

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  11. Totally prefect image -- your history!! Love those happy faces - you can't help but smile too!
    Hugs

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    1. Thanks so much. Yes, I must say I smile every time I look at them!

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  12. What a wonderful way to demonstrate connection, and I would say that you have a very special brother that scanned all of these in to the computer. It will be a treasure for you to have these! Lovely

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    1. Thanks and yes, I'm so thrilled to have them. I can only imagine how long it took my brother to scan all of them and you can be sure it wasn't exciting work!

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  13. this is such a treasure, Linda!! I love it and look forward to seeing more as you ride the wild pony. what a labour of love and tenderness.

    BEautimous, too, your bits of fiddling. the photos look perfect, NOT at all like some of mine from that time. mayBE I will see what can BE done to bring them into the 21st century!!!

    you are too cute, by the way... I love seeing you as a wee lass. so cherished by all your brothers, clearly.

    xoxo

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    1. Thanks Currie. They do seem to adore me in these shots. Sadly the novelty has worn off. LOL

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  14. Well, Linda, as the official historian in my family, I am overjoyed for you and your photo treasures. Thanks for sharing these with us.

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    1. Thanks so much Andrea. As I said, it is such a wonderful treasure to have!

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  15. What a marvellous gift and perfect for the prompt for PAF. Take care and enjoy the weekend.

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    1. Thanks. I though it was a nice way of illustrating the theme. You have a wonderful weekend too.

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  16. How cool! What a special "connection" of your family. Have fun with all those wonderful memories.

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    1. Thank you Ida. I'm certainly enjoying re'connecting' to my childhood and ever before...

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  17. Wow- that is a lot of images to scan! Lucky you. Thanks for stopping by my blog- it is so nice to be connected. :-)

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    1. Thanks Teri. I can only imagine how long and boring a task it much have been for my brother. Which just makes me treasure it all the more!

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  18. lvoely psot for the theme.

    I saw you have some nice abstract artwork. Do you know I have a meme called NF Abstract? It runs on wednesdays if you are interested.

    nfmemes.blogspot.com

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    1. Thanks. I'll check out your blog, although abstracts aren't really my comfort zone.

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  19. What a wonderful gift to receive! And such beautiful children.

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    1. Thanks Linda. Too bad some of our cuteness wore off as we've all aged. LOL

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  20. I asked for the same my sister. The only pictures of my grandparents and parents are paper prints. It's great what your brother did for all of you!!!

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    1. I know my Mom has some old prints too. Now I'm thinking I'll get those and digitize them too so that we can all have copies of them.

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  21. What a wonderful gift of memories. Endless hours of wonder. Valerie

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    1. Absolutely Valerie. I can't tell you how thrilled I was when I opened the parcel and saw what was inside!

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  22. What a precious gift from your brother! I love old photos from this era (my childhood). Aside from the delight of the photos themselves, I really like the frames you applied and how the textures softened the tones.

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    1. Thanks. We're so lucky to have all these wonderful old photos digitized.

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