old photos

Kids

Life

I dug out my old photo albums to see what treasures are in there and I found a few! I am pretty certain I took this photo. I remember this trip to Portland when I was a youngster and I specifically remember taking photos on this trip. It was one of our many trips to PDX to visit our friends and family (we drove from Spokane). Also, I think the goofy expressions on the subjects are a big giveaway that another kid took this photo.

My younger brother is in the middle and our neighborhood friends are on either side. They had either moved to Portland or we traveled with them to visit their family (whom we were also friends with).

I honestly am not sure what year this was taken. Sometime in the mid 70s. I am a year old than my brother and he looks to be about age 7 in this photo?

I remember during this trip I walked over to the corner convenience store to buy candy. I  feel like I was alone. That doesn’t seem right, but I guess this was a different time. Anyway, I was at this convenience store and the clerk asked me why I wasn’t in school, very sternly. It scared me so I hustled out of the store. I felt really bad, like  this person thought I was a hoodlum or something, and I didn’t want this person to think that I was a bad person. So it made me feel bad. God, the complicated emotions of kids are weird.

Anyway, we were on Spring Break that week. That’s why I wasn’t in school.
kids

Do you remember your first roll of film?

Life

I was inspired by the first line of this blog post by Eve North on  35mmc.  It made me think about when I first started this hobby of photography.

I don’t have a clear memory of my first roll of film because photography has been a hobby of mine since I was a kid. I can’t even remember when I started. I know I was in elementary school. Probably 4th or 5th grade? I remember that I had an point-n-shoot camera and my mom must’ve given me film for it and had it developed at the local convenience store. I might have paid for the developing and film out of my allowance. I will have to ask her sometime how this hobby started!

Anyway, it got me thinking that this might be a fun series to explore on this blog: my first photos.

I will start with this one. I love this photo. It is a photo of my dog, Crackers. She was such a sweetheart. We got her as a puppy when I was 5 and she died when I was in my early 20s, so she pretty much grew up with me. I even named her. I often have dreams about her.

Clearly I didn’t grasp the concept of composition yet. I was more about capturing moments on film at this stage….

crackers.jpg

 

Throwback Thursday – 4 generations

Life

As I mentioned, I am taking a Photoshop class and this week we learned about restoring old photos. It just so happened that my mom brought me a photo album that belonged to my grandmother that I, for some reason, had stored in my things at her house in Spokane. Many of the photos neither of us had seen before and this is one of them! And it’s such a great photo! Here we have me at around 7 years old, with my mom, great-grandmother in the middle, and grandmother on the right.

The original photo has a red cast to it and now I wonder why. Is it due to the fading of color in the print? It seems like a lot of old snapshots have a red cast to them. In the original photo below you will see that I have a gnarly gash on my chin. I was trying to remember how I hurt myself and then it hit me, this is when I took a serious spill on my bike. I wrote about it here.

4 generations before

before

Here is my “new and improved” Photoshopped version. I corrected the color, removed a ton of dust, and removed the scab on my chin.

4 generations after

After

I am kind of proud of the finished version, but in some way it makes me a little bit sad too. Like I’m rewriting history or something.

It’s interesting because I posted both of these on Flickr and I got more response on the original version. One person even said that the original’s red cast appealed to them. I kind of feel like the original, red cast, scabbed chin, and all, tells more of a story. What are your thoughts?

Wayback Wednesday

Life

Wilfred Boucher

I haven’t done a Wayback Wednesday post in a while and I miss doing them So I will start again. Here is a photo of who we think is my Great Grandfather, Wilfred Boucher. I have been thinking a lot about him, especially since I visited his grave last year.  The man has a lot of secrets. And I kind of want to find out what they are.