Lilian and I visited my Grandmother today and we spent a few hours scanning and tagging old family photos. And then I had to document our documentation. Because I was feeling meta like that.
The photos were all from an album put together by my Great-Grandmother, who meticulously recorded names, dates, and locations. I tried to keep us much of the information as possible. I had to give props to my fellow documentarian. If she’d been born 75 years later, Nana would have been one of those people who tags the corner of your head on Facebook.
I’ll put it this way. There were several (several!) photos where she had labeled the backs of people’s heads.
My grandma and I only made it partially way through one album, but we weren’t working very efficiently (it took me an hour to figure out that you can put multiple photos onto her scanner and it will automatically separate them in individual files for you). Plus, I had to stop periodically to take care of my baby. I want to go back for more than a few hours and bring someone to help me.
One of the nifty things about mass scanning photos is that you get to see everything, not just the perfect ones. My Nana put every photo she had of my Grandparents’ wedding in her album. And then wrote who gave her the photo on the back of each one. Because she was OCD like that.
Me? I didn’t go quite so far as to include that info in the metadata for my scans. Because I’d like to pretend that I’m not quite that nuts.
I’m still out and about, but once I get home and do some processing, I’ll post a few of the better photos.
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