@fotosito’s "Now or Never" Project – Scanning Slides and Preserving Family History

Have you ever thought about scanning old family photos to preserve your heritage and discover stories of your family you never knew before? Kristian (@fotosito) began this journey in 2020, three years after his father's passing, by scanning his father's old photographs from the 1960s. Today, he is here to share both the technical and emotional aspects of his experience.

The following words are written by Kristian.

My name is Kristian. I’m 54 years old. Born and raised in Denmark, by a mother from El Salvador, CA, and a Danish father. I live in Copenhagen and am a landscape-gardener by profession. When it comes to photography, I have been taking photos as a more serious hobbyist since 2009, using mainly digital gear. Prior to this, since my teenage years in the 1980s, I have mostly shot with small 35 mm film cameras, however without really knowing what I was doing.

Why spend time digitizing old slides? To preserve the past, I guess. In my case, I was trying to rescue a bunch of old pictures before they deteriorated too much.

It all began back in 2020 when I found an old slide projector, trashed and ready to be turned into a pile of e-waste. For who on earth needs an old slide projector in the 21st century? Me, and I did not hesitate. I took it with me, fixed it, and pressed the switch. The fact is, I’m the owner of a couple thousand 35 mm slides from the 1960s that used to belong to my father before he passed away in 2017. As you probably already guessed, I’m the only one in the family who is obsessed with photography, so my sisters and brother all agreed that I could keep all the slides, the old film transparencies. 'Because we’re sure you’ll figure something out', one of them said with a smirk.

A slide projector is without doubt the ultimate time machine. As I sat there in the light of the projector, looking at the slides for the first time in many years, I was brought back to my childhood in the 1970s and early 80s, when my dad showed us his pictures from around the world: Uganda, UK, USA, USSR, Iceland. Countries where he had worked as a horticulturist; except Iceland and USSR. These slides came from a stopover in Iceland, when he added a month to his stay, and as a visitor to the USSR as a member of the Danish Soviet Friendship Association. Then telling all his incredible stories about working as a real gun carrying cowboy in America; or being a storm chaser in the Midwest; or him being a spy in the USSR; or enjoying the view of hippos grazing in the backyard every evening; or him meeting Idi Amin (who was the supreme army commander at that time) in Uganda. As a child I believed most of what he told us and was determined to travel the world by myself one day, which I did later in life.

As I sat there on the couch in 2020 as a middle-aged man going through my father’s old pictures, I was overwhelmed by the genuine look of the photos, beside the vintage atmosphere and the grainy look. For sure these slides were historical in their own way, this was clear just by looking at the people and the cars. But I felt something else, something careless, something transcending technical perfection, a just-do-it-attitude. Snapshots at their finest!

This was for sure a collection of travel photos captured by a young man in his early twenties, 60 years ago; a very curious and adventurous person who wanted to experience the world; a hardworking guy with little money in his pocket; a young man who captured his surroundings by using a quite simple 35 mm film camera without a rangefinder - a Voigtländer Vito Automatic I.

As I went through these old pictures, I decided to digitize them, or at least some of them, and later upload them to my own website, and share them with the world, instead of keeping them for myself on a hard disk or in some (acid free) boxes up in the attic. Overall, a nice way to preserve these old pictures. When posting on the internet, I have primarily been selecting photos of general interest, like photos of places that a viewer might recognize or relate to.

I knew from the beginning it was a 'now or never' project, because after 50-60 years of storage in old cardboard boxes, many of the slides had faded or had changed color, becoming bluish or magenta.

First, I tried a dedicated slide scanner, but I wasn’t satisfied with the result; too soft, too low resolution and generally unsharp pictures, beside the fact that it took forever to scan each slide, perhaps because of the many dust spots on every single photo.

After several attempts with the scanner and slide duplicators I finally concluded that the best result was to use a dedicated macro lens, my 100mm lens adjusted at f/5.6-8, to photograph each slide. Meaning manual focusing for optimal sharpness for each picture. For lighting, I used a speedlight. To obtain the right focus length, I used some old M42 extension tubes between the slide holder (from a slide duplicator) and the macro lens, all connected with step up/down rings and some duct tape – a complete DIY wonder, but it worked as intended. But as I want to scan more slides and also 35 mm negatives, I now have a more convenient and faster setup with LED light instead of a speedlight, but the principle is the same – a way of focusing precisely and adjusting for the right amount of light, either by adjusting the light source itself or by increasing or decreasing the shutter speed on the camera. The fact of the matter is one must be careful not to overexposure the image by over blowing the bright areas like white clouds.

For post-editing, I use Lightroom and products from DxO. The basic editing is mostly about image cropping and color adjusting; in my case adding more “warmth” to the image, often by dragging the color temperature slider to the right to bring back the original colors. When it comes to dirt and dust spots, I only remove the worst spots, because I don’t want to hide the reality that these are some quite old pictures. Furthermore, I think it adds to the overall vintage look.

So how did my father’s old travel photos end up on my LomoHome? The short version is that I recently made a purchase in the Lomography web shop and realized how long it had been since I uploaded anything to my LomoHome. Then I thought to myself: why not share these pictures with the Lomography community? It’s all about film and a community with its own marvelous connection to a piece of Soviet tech - a perfect match!

One thing is the whole technical aspect, but I think the human aspect is even more rewarding on a personal level. I have already met some people who knew my father, for example his travel companion and close friend, which has been of great help. And then there is the “Russian connection”, as I call it, a woman on the phone who was able to describe one of his photos from 1967 and identify herself in the photo, describing my father as a good man with good knowledge of the Russian language. This was a surprise to me, since I have only heard him say some few basic words in Russian.

Perhaps the most intriguing story was when my father met my mother for the first time in San Francisco in 1963 during an English class for foreigners, mostly Latin Americans. Her family was not quite sure about my dad and his flirtatious relationship with my mum. Well, no problem according to him, because he was also not ready for marriage and kids at that time in his life. Even though they each went in their own direction with their life, they manage to keep in touch by letters. In the late 60s, my father had signed up with a humanitarian organization in Denmark and was now heading to Uganda. But because of a serious back injury caused by several long motorcycle rides on potholed dirt roads he had to leave Uganda after two years – a country and its people he often described as mesmerizing. But before leaving Uganda he (pre) proposed to my mother by letter and gave her a gold ring (also by mail), which he had made in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Yes, we are talking first mining the gold and then handcrafting the ring in a workshop in a small town.

My parents got married in San Francisco in July 1969, and they went from there to New York City by train, and later in October from New York to Copenhagen, Denmark, by cruise ship. And to finish this story, I was born in Denmark in May 1970 – no time wasted.

Although there have been some challenges with the scanning process, I will still recommend everyone who has some old family photos to scan them, whatever it is, negative or positive images (slides), because by scanning the photos, the pictures will be more accessible for family and friends. I must say a good file order before you start the scanning will certainly make the workflow easier. I imagine newer pictures are easier to scan, so you can use many different scanning methods. Using a smartphone is probably the easiest method. Everything gets scanned and stored in one device, and you can easily edit and share the pictures.

After I scanned the first pictures, my family has often shown great interest in our family pictures, and it has started many conversations and laughs. As the old saying goes: 'A picture is worth a thousand words.’ I agree, and sometimes more than a thousand words, if the mood is right.

Thank you Kristian for sharing this amazing story!

Do you want to see more of Kristian's scans, or his own work? Check out his LomoHome @fotosito, and his website.

Do you want to give scanning a shot as well? Read more about our DigitaLIZA and use our free Lomo DigitaLIZA lab tool to turn the negatives into positives. And don’t forget to share those family stories with us!

written by lomocato on 2024-08-18 #culture #people #history #family #slide-film #scanning #scandinavia #archiving Share Article