New Film Scanner

We have added a new scanner to our digitization lineup: The Hasselblad Flextight X1.

 

Introduction to Digitization

On August 9th, 2010, Ken Allen offers a seminar to the Society of American Archivists’ annual conference about how to do basic imaging and small digitization projects. The tutorial highlights key points of his presentation and gives insight into the process of digitization.

Scanner Calibration Tutorial

Archival Scanning Tutorial

Museum of the City of New York digitization project

Our most recent success at the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) has revolutionized their digital image library. We won a 7 month project to digitize 28,000 photographs, we completed 39,000 (140% of the goal!). MCNY is ecstatic about our accomplishments and has received great press about the digitization project, as well as on the several exhibits and books that we have produced for the MCNY. Here is one story from NY 1, the local New York City news station:

Link to the article/video

Vernacular Photos

Friend of the Giuliani’s posing on an automobile licensed NJ, 1938

Outside of an air-conditioned theater

Engineer at Empire Brake Company ready Popular Photography Magazine

Looking out from Empire Brake Company

Giuliani Family Picnic, young boy running obstacle course

Henry Giuliani, self-portrait, ca. 1930s

When you are a photographer, photographs come to you. Much as a doctor or a lawyer at a party is often asked for advice, when people know you are a photographer, they often ask for your opinion about photographic matters or tell you about their personal or family photographs.

It is almost 3 years since I was visiting my aunt Peg in Florida, when she told me that her aunt had just sent her a box containing dozens of rolls of film. These were taken by my great-aunt Ruthie’s husband, Henry Giuliani, who had passed away some 20 years ago. I asked to see the film and she brought out what looked like a small ammunitions box from World War II. It was metal and painted army-green. Inside the box were dozens of rolls of very flammable, nitrate-based film. This was family history and it was in danger of being lost forever.

I asked my Aunt Peg to let me take the film. She said that it had been in this box for 60 years and it would be fine in her care. I told her that the box had been in Massachusetts where it is cold and dry. In the hot and humid Florida climate, it would be destroyed in a matter of months. In this case, the photographs didn’t come to me so much as I begged her to give me the film in order to preserve it.

Back in New York, the rolls were scanned, yielding 1500 images that had been shot on Kodak, Agfa, and Dupont film in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. There were pictures of dinners on the town, my cousins by a pier at a lake, and a boy clowning it up for the camera at a family barbeque. My uncle was a leg man and there are many pictures of my great-aunt’s beautiful limbs, including experimental pieces with filmy fabric draped over her legs. He was an avid amateur photographer and took photographs of trees covered in snow, landscapes in all different kinds of light, and portraits, including self-portraits, which were clearly meant for artistic purposes rather than recording family life.

From the 1500 images, I chose 25 images to work with. I retouched them, removing dust, dirt, and scratches, and adjusted the contrast for printing. One of my favorite photographs from this group is a self-portrait of my uncle looking into the camera and holding a pipe to his mouth, looking like William Holden in his middle years.

One of the ideas I have is to create a Family Preservation Archives service. The minimum project would perhaps contain 500 images and have a minimum cost of $1,000. Digital files would be made from film and prints, which the family could then make into digitally printed books or upload onto a website for family members. At blurb.com or lulu.com, photobooks can be made starting at $13 per book.

If you have any thoughts on this, send in your comments. If you know anyone who is interested in this, please have them contact me.

-ken

Photographic history is being rewritten

I met Dusan at the Photographic Materials Group meeting in Rochester, NY and was fascinated by the fact that his XRF machine can make analyzing historic photographs so easy. I’ve been studying the manual method for years and although it’s fun, the lack of certainty is unnerving. It’s amazing that his analysis has revealed that many photographs in great collections are not what they were thought to be.

I was happy to see the NY Times run an article on 4/1 describing Dusan Stulik’s research at the Getty Conservation Institute.
Click on the following link to read it: http://tinyurl.com/22dat4