Old photographs.
Once again we find ourselves “Locked down” and not able to get out and take photographs for the third time in less than a year. I spent the first lockdown cleaning and repairing equipment, cameras, lenses, tripods, monopods, flash guns, round filters, square filters you name it I cleaned it. I even found equipment I didn’t even know I had including a Vanguard tripod which was thirty-years old and still in a sealed box unopened. A tripod that has been put in a suitcase for twenty years, transported to Switzerland where it remained in the suitcase unopened for another ten before returning to the UK with us until 2019.
The second lockdown I spent scanning old photographs on a flatbed scanner I’d not used for at least ten years, thank goodness I could still find a driver for it online. Storage wasn’t a problem I had five TB’s to spare. The one thing that surprised me was just how many of the prints I was scanning were frankly, rubbish. I just don’t mean under or over exposed or a portrait some somebody with a tree spouting out of the top of their head, we have all seen them. I mean I looked at some of the photographs and thought to myself “Why on earth did I take that, what was the point?” I must say it did occupied some time trying to remember just why or what was the motivation for wasting my time, film and money taking that?
I mean half a dozen shots of Blackpool Tower on a dull day in November, I mean why? The Tower is still there it is still ugly and it isn’t going anywhere is it. So that saved me some time and energy as they just ended up in the shredder. As did other pointless photographs of long since forgotten flower festivals taking in B&W, local Football Teams long since retired (more later) Ponies with small girls sitting on them smiling with Rosettes held in hands, why I have no idea, so they all went as well.
Then after three weeks of scanning and shredding I had several boxes and albums empty and free to dispose of. Then it occurred to me that my hard drives would be equally cluttered with rubbish so I thought why not clean them as well after all it wouldn’t take long and I wasn’t going anywhere was I. So with a smile on my face and hope in my heart I set about doing just that. I started out with 18TB’s of photographs stored after scanning in all my remaining old prints and after applying the same methods of selection I am now back down to just 13TB’s.
One word of warning before don’t make the mistake of deleting everything you have by mistake if you choose to do some gardening, I did. Lucky for me it was all backed-up thanks to the advice given to me when I set my storage system up.
Just after the second lockdown had ended and before the third one had stared I was approached by a rather elderly looking gentleman who seeing the camera hung around my neck, pointed out that on that very Recreation Ground forty (yes forty) years before I had taken a team photograph of him and his team just before a Cup Final. He went on to tell me that he was one of the last ones still alive and then he asked me “You couldn’t do me a print of it could you?” If I had scanned the print in I’d be able to do just that I could have gone home turned on my PC and printer and walked back and given him a copy.
Good job I kept all my negatives all in date order and cross referenced. I don’t have a darkroom anymore so it was a case of using an attachment to my scanner before I printed it off.