My Life in Scans, Part 1

I've had 50+ years of my father's negatives, slides, and prints packed away for several years. They start in the late 40s, after the end of WWII, when my father returned from internment in a German POW camp and married my mother.

I also had a nice advanced consumer grade scanner (Epson V700) sitting on a shelf and I finally decided to put the two together and digitize everything. It is an interesting process. The negatives and slides were not organized and I decided to start with the negatives and grouped them by film size to make them easier to scan in batches. I'll do another post on the technical challenges of this project. I've scanned around 680 items so far and am probably not half way through.

I'll also post photos I find interesting. Here are two that stand out for me.

Kramer's Wigwam Cafe

This is one of my favorites that my father took, Kramer's Wigwam Cafe in Browning, Montana. The original is a 4x5 negative. . I'm not sure about the date but it would have been before 1952.

Apparently using a wigwam style was a thing in roadside architecture for a while. Take a look at the Roadside Architecture web site for other examples. Kramer's (including this photo) is featured about halfway down the page.

I'm not exactly sure why this photo appeals to me so much. It might have to do with the stance and expressions of the two women. They just seem like examples of the greatest generation— tough, capable women who were children during the Depression and waited at home while their men went to war.

My mother is on the right, holding my brother with me standing in front of her. I don't know who the other family is. The little girl would be about my age and I wonder what happened to her. Judging from the age of my brother, this photo was taken in 1951, likely in Montana. It is from a 120 negative.

Coming up—photos from the four years we lived in South Africa.