My Dad and Me

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My Dad and Me, 1987-1989?

Most of the pictures that I am posting of my father were (obviously) not taken by me. I have, however, scanned them all into the computer and edited them in photoshop.  

This one is of my dad and me taken sometime in the 1987-1989 range because I am somewhere between the age of 1 1/2 and 3. Maybe I will be able to narrow the range down a little as I go through other pictures. 

I also can't tell you who took the picture or where the picture was taken. It could be at an aunt and uncle's old house or even at my grandma's house before the kitchen was re-finished. 

Yesterday I spent several hours going through old photos of my dad and scanning them into my computer. I am amazed at how many photos actually had some writing on the back to denote who is actually in the picture and when the image was taken. Others at least had a month/year date stamp from when they were taken or developed. Still many others didn't have any indication of who is in the photo. If the picture was clear enough, after a certain age, I could confirm that it was indeed a picture of my father. For the rest I have to rely on the memories of those who sorted out all of the old family photos and trust that it really is a picture of my father. 

It brought to my attention a few things

  1. Almost universally we assume we will continue to know who is in a photo and where/when it is taken. That, coupled with the difficulty of labeling each photo, most photos will not have any indication of time, place, or the people in the image.
  2. Even the photos that were labeled may have incorrect labeling in some way, shape, or form. 
  3. Date stamps at the time an image was taken are a great indicator of the who/what/why. Especially when narrowing down images of families with large numbers of children.  
  4. The digital age will help us with some of these issues - the metadata stored on the images I capture with my DSLR greatly outweighs the data printed on the edge of a print or negative. Venues like facebook with the digital capturing of who is in a photo along with comments about it can help too.  
  5. It would be wonderful if I could add to the metadata - basically combine the power built into the camera and facebook for future generations. 
  6. Even if I could do that I will probably continue to be as lazy as anyone with print photos and I may have exponentially more photos. 
  7. Lets hope that whatever I have stored on this Mac can continue to transfer to new devices and can be accessible to others when I am no longer here to maintain the somewhat large collection of images I already have.