Job done

What began as a Covid lockdown project at the start of 2020 has now come to an end. Well, nearly: I've done all I intended, but I've found more to do, which will take a little while longer to deal with. But essentially, the job's done.

I am talking about my Grand Scanning Project. 

The aim was to scan - that is, turn into digital form - all my remaining photo transparencies (or slides) and whatever I wanted of my remaining photo prints. 'Remaining' because since 2000 - particularly in 2010, 2011 and 2012 - I had already scanned hundreds of slides and prints. But the bulk of my large collection was still undigitised. It would first need reviewing, to cast out items already scanned, and to weed out anything that wasn't important. Ideally I would have scanned the lot, but I had to cut the Project down to a manageable size, to ensure that it got completed. I kept the people pictures and was ruthless with the rest. That still left a lot of slides and prints. But I could feasibly fit it into my life with hope of successful completion. Nevertheless, a really big effort was needed. It would take many months of constant work, spread over more than one winter. I wasn't wrong about that! 

All these pictures were old. The transparencies mainly dated from the 1980s, but some were from the 1960s and 1970s. The prints dated from the tail end of 1989 to the beginning of 2000 - mostly from the 1990s. So in 2020 nothing was less than twenty years old, and most of the pictures were thirty or even forty years old. They showed my life and background a very long time ago, and frankly had no connection at all with my present-day life. But the historian (and genealogist) in me insisted on adding them to my digital Photo Archive. 

Many people wouldn't have bothered. Many people, even if they might want to embark on such a project, would never be able to find the time. I was lucky to be well-placed to tackle it. 

I spent the spring of 2020, and onwards to almost Christmas of that year, scanning the slides. They were in eight wooden boxes, each holding a maximum of 350 slides, although not all the boxes were quite full. From 1965 onwards I'd taken about 5,000 photos in slide form, but during the 1980s began to weed out the less worthy in order to make my collection fit into those boxes. In the end, I was routinely discarding old slides simply to make room for new ones. 

By 1989 the slide collection had stabilised at around 2,500, and I started scanning them in 2000, when I went digital. The first task in 2020 was to identify which ones had already been scanned, to avoid doing them again. This is the scene as I commenced:

Quite a few - more than I'd thought - had indeed been scanned before. Those went straight into the bin. Although I knew that I had the photo itself safely in my Archive, it was still sad to see the physical slides in that bin. I recalled taking the shots when young. I also recalled earlier dedicated work to write the date, place, sequential number, and other markings, on each slide. I have always captioned my pictures. 

Scanning these slides involved clipping them into a special frame and doing them in batches of twelve.

Scanning was only the initial part of the process. Once the image was on my laptop, it needed correction for tilt and maybe some cropping. Then correction of of exposure, highlights, shadow detail and contrast. Then captioning from the notes written on the slide, and possibly from old paper notes kept way back in the 1970s. Only then could I drop the slide itself into the bin. 

There was satisfaction in making progress, but also sadness to see each bin fill up, as if this was my actual life that I was tossing away. The captions visible on each slide evoked such nostalgia! But I couldn't keep any of them. I had to be firm.

On 11th December 2020, a significant moment. I was about to deal with my very last unscanned slide:

Two days later, I had processed the last batch of scanned slides, including the one above, and I'd tipped them all into my kitchen bin, ready to take outside for the refuse men to throw into the back of their lorry.

As you can see, I mostly shot Kodak. I was never - for instance - a Fujifilm fan. 

Those handsome wooden slide boxes weren't junked. Thankfully I was able to give them to Coline, when next in Scotland.

Without a pause, I pressed on with the photo prints. These were all in large plastic boxes - dozens of them - colour-coded of course! I gradually brought them down from my attic. Here's such a batch, ready for scanning at the very end of December 2020. (I tackled the shots of 'places' first, leaving 'people' shots for later - for my last lap, so to speak) 

As with the slides, I'd already scanned hundreds of these prints. But that still left a lot to do. And it would take much longer to get through them. Still, on the 28th March 2022, there was another significant moment, when found myself captioning - while on holiday at Lyme Regis (such dedication!) - the very last of the 'places' shots:

Two days later, I'd finished processing those prints and had binned them. I was wondering whether I should preserve the last slide box.

But I ended up binning that too. There could be no sentimentality. Besides, how on earth could I use the box, other than for some sort of card index? But had I abandoned such old-fashioned stuff back in 2000.

That was the end of my scanning for months ahead. But in November 2022 I was ready for a final spurt to the finishing-line. This time, it would be purely the 'people' prints. It promised to be interesting. I vaguely remembered what should be on those prints, but I expected some surprises. And so it was.

I made slow but steady progress. Here (on 21st January 2023) were the last four of the 'people' boxes lined up for scanning. Only individual portraits were left; I had dealt with all the group shots. 

The packets alongside contained prints taken by other people, such as Dad or Auntie Peg or my sister-in-law Glenda. Dad's seemed to be those he'd not deemed good enough for the albums he'd put together. As for the remainder, many of them were clearly reprints, rather than original photographs. None of them were my pictures. They were however worthy of digitising. But they could all wait until I'd finished scanning my own prints. 

It was enthralling, dealing with those portraits of my family and old friends. Mum, for instance, as she was in the 1990s - she was in her seventies then, like I am now. Here she is, through the 1990s, starting with a shot from 1992:

I remember that sunny walk we had together in the Devil's Punch Bowl at Hindhead. We discussed several deep things. I may have had a somewhat wary relationship with Mum, but we had our close moments too. 

Mum was a Domestic Queen. It was 1993. She was very fond of wearing aprons indoors. I still use those stainless steel saucepans daily:

Sitting on a low beach wall at Instow in 1994, with Appledore behind. Still a favourite spot of mine:

Ironing something for me in 1994 at my home in Broadbridge Heath, just outside Horsham:

Enjoying the sun (and the breeze) at Hayling Island in 1995:

Posing for me by a sea wall at Burnham-on-Sea in 1995:

I often consider how I stack up against Mum. Two portraits of me from 2023:

What would she say?

Then there were friends I hadn't seen for nearly thirty years, like Helen, in 1993 and 1994:

And of course Sally - from 1992 to 1997:

Such friends belong to a definite era, that ended when someone important came into the picture. But thirty-odd years on, they will still be around. Should I reach out and find them? It's the same old question. I've discussed it here before, hitherto concluding that it's not a wise thing to do. They might be disappointed or negative about how I turned out. And perhaps vice versa. My present position is that if fate brings us together, then I will say hello and see what results. Otherwise, I'm reluctant to contrive anything. And yet: who dares wins. We'll see.

Well, I ploughed on with my scanning. 

As with the slides, it was binful after binful after the captioning had been done. 

It seemed almost sacrilegious to throw away these old prints, which had cost so much to develop from the negatives, and were all images of real people. But once digitised, they would be instantly accessible, instantly searchable (because of the standardised captions), and of course they could be easily shared. Keeping the print would be superfluous, and simply prolong a storage problem. Besides, it was clear that every print was gradually fading. Not by much so far, but the colours were obviously not permanent. Better to have a digital copy. 

And then, on 23rd February - not quite a week ago - it was all done. The last binful. Project complete. Mission accomplished.

All these scans now found their way not only into my Photo Archive, duly filed away in folders, but into my smaller Most Important Pictures collection, the one I keep on my phone for instant reference. Sheer age had made each print 'Most Important'. The MIP collection gets a lot of use, especially as it's so easy to find a particular shot, because of the captioning. I can search by date, place, personal name, and often by subject. I hardly ever need to scroll much. So having 60,000 pictures on my phone - backed up, naturally - is very far from pointless. 

I'd got to the end of my project, but there remained those packets containing other people's pictures. 

I've now got them out, and rough-sorted them into years:

Hmm. This will take some work, to assign a proper date to each one before scanning! For only some of them (mostly Peg's) have any kind of caption. Oh well, it's obviously worth doing. Surely a week's work only? My next photo task, then, before going away on the first caravan trip of the year. Once, that is, I get my car back from its very comprehensive (and rather expensive!) annual service...