On July of 1888 Eastman Kodak placed a camera on the market with the slogan, "You press the button, we do the rest". For the first time in history the masses could now record history with the push of a button. No harsh chemicals were needed to bring alive forever moments in time. In 1901 Eastman Kodak introduced the Kodak Brownie and the rest is history.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

SCHOOL DAYS PART DEUX

If you have been a faithful follower of Shadows you know we presented a list of early school pictures from the Appalachian section of Ohio taken in the late 1920's through early 1930. Last summer the same friend who gave me most of the pictures from the previous post also gave me the ones I am displaying today. The last few are an exception and came from another source.

It is interesting to study the faces. Again, that is the beauty of black and white. There is only a small amount of touch up because I did not want to change the features of the vintage photo.

One great news flash to offer my readers--I have now saved, scrimped and fought tooth and nail to save up the needed money to buy my new super computer. Horaay! But the caveat is I feel it is important to buy the extended warranty that allows the Geek Squad to come to my home and repair the computer if necessary for three years. That jacks up the cost another $150, which puts that carrot back out on the string for a while. But soon I will be able to run more programs without the computer crashing. I will clean up the hard drive on my old dependable Sony and sell it to someone who wants a great computer but doesn't need to run a ton of power grabbing photo programs.


I am very anti-credit card, especially after my Sears card went up to 26 percent interest, so to get this computer plus my scanner by saving and selling on e-bay shows that most anyone can live without credit. My little cottage industry will never borrow from the credit card robber barons. And yes, I have made a few dollars here and there doing restoration work.

Now it is time to get off the soap box.


I love this guy. There is a sense he knows something we don't. Osh Kosh was defiantly the style down yonder
I'm not sure but this might be from the 1950's only because the glasses are what my classmates adorned during my school days.
Now wouldn't you have straightened out his tie if you were the photographer. Well straight or crooked at least he had a smile for the camera man.
I detect a little Cherokee in her blood which was not uncommon for families in that area to have American Indian in their blood.
Two boys. Two bibs. Two struggle to smile. Like the last post it seems like families doubled up to save money on school photos. Would I wanted my older brother to be in my picture. Hmm, probably so.
Got to love these boys.
Equal time for all races here. A new set of choppers was likely on his wish list.
I think this is a 1950's picture also but it may have been an earlier photo
The two sisters show the same economical depression as the boys. They had bibs and the girls had home made clothing
Back to the 1950's? I'm sorry we are jumping through the stratosphere of time but when I receive a gift of photos then they are cleaned up and put here. Some had dates, some not. Sorry, none had last names.
This lad would have done well to straighten up his tie in order to hide the safety pin on his shirt. Still the crooked tie does make the photo look very boyish.
Ahh, suspenders. A step up from bibs. I don't know, never wearing them, though I did have several nice pair of designer bibs over the years. Loved them
Sorry, no smile today.
In the last batch I had the bruised girl who you could read like a map. Here we go again. Now if one of them smiled I could say the frown was just a fluke. But this picture tells its own story

We end the school days page with the one who got left behind. If looks could kill. Come on mom, send her to school.

Sunday, September 20, 2009

SCHOOL DAYS PLUS TWO


I am a bit late on my promised School Days issue of Shadows of America. I can peel off numerous excuses for being rather slow on posting--but if you are followers of this site you know my latest gig on restoring photos is still on the learning curve. Between battering my hard head against the desk because my vintage 2003 Sony computer is slowing down to crawl, so much that even I can move faster than it and whoopee, getting a few paying gigs caused this site to grow a few cobwebs.

What we have today is a pile of school photos, plus a couple that are not school related, but since they are too cute the pictures had to find a home here. Likely your first reaction on viewing the pictures would be, yikes, I remember my school photos! The companies that traveled from school to school never heard of photo retouching or imagined something like Photo Shop. How many of us were Hollywood material? Ahem, be truthful. I was the school dwarf, in the fact I was the second smallest pigeon toed, knock kneed, skinniest kid in elementary school who became the amazing growing bean sprout in my freshman year.

My 81 year old friend Jack gave me these photos which date from 1928 to early 1932. Likely all the pictures came from from Southern Ohio near the West Virginia border which was an Appalachian area. Part two of the school kids, which I hope to have up in the next couple of days show the opposite of what we see in today's school photos. Children often wore homemade clothing and bibs to get their mug shots. The photos we see were likely the only pictures the family could afford.



In many of the school photos you will see more than one child at the sitting. I can not be sure why, perhaps it was cheaper to double up with two family members to save money, which in this case, being an Appalachian area was likely the reason. Perhaps it was fashionable back then to have to siblings in one pose.

Did Jay Leno grow up in the Appalachians? Is it just me or do you see the similarity. Just a reminder as we go through the pictures, all the photos went through two stages of restoration before they were posted. First the scanner cleaned up the pictures a bit, then the photos all went through a mild Photo Shop clean up to remove smudges and fingerprints.

Dare we forget the teachers? Here we have the typical Mrs Crabtree. This photo almost got tossed because it had ink stains all over the top but it cleaned up pretty nice. I am sure she told her students to clean up nice for the photographer so it is only fitting I do the same. The face of my teachers are well embedded in my mind but I have no pictures of them

Handsome young man indeed..

One thing I have learned from this new adventure of restoring photos is beware of overkill. It is easy to attack every visible flaw , but one must remember that you are restoring not re-shooting the photo. After spending hours on do-overs, I often ended up erasing the whole mess and started all over because it looked terrible.


Nearly every photo here had only enough touch-up to to erase old marks and scratches. I have a few secret touches that make the photo look brand new and crisp. True, many photos dug out of grandma's trunk have issues because of the type of camera or age of the photo but every photo brings its own challenge. But photos like these are a lot nicer than the original but like a little work goes a long way.

What would happen if a student showed up in an old pair of bibs today? It was not an issue back then. Likely that was all he had to wear and as you can see they certainly were not a new pair. Still, he was a nice handsome young man who did after all comb his hair.

I don't think all kids liked to have their brother in the picture. Maybe the boy on the left just didn't want his picture taken. You can say he just didn't want to smile, but look at those furrowed eyebrows.

Alright, I could have Photo Shopped this to be Alfred E. Nueman and his popular "What me worry," look. Like I said early on, we were not charming or handsome. That is what I like about kids, they were pretty much candid and posing often may have been uncomfortable but smiles or frowns made the shot.

Often you could see deep in the soul of a child through a photo. When I started to clean up this young girl's picture I debated whether or not to remove the wound on her forehead as well as the black eye on the right side. I did clean up the eye a tad bit, but I could not clean up her thoughts. I wouldn't dare. Where did the wounds come from? I have my ideas.

I have often seen pictures that make tears well up in my eyes. This photo makes me want to reach into the photo and give her a big hug. Enough of my emotional commentary.

I said there was two photos that didn't fit the page. Maybe I can make it just one photo by saying these two kids were on their way to the one room school house where brother and sister disappeared to every day. The photos came from the same area so they got tossed on to the page.

Like I said, every photo needs its own touches to bring out the best. This picture took a bit of work to make it look new and crisp. One thing I do when I restore is look for the new version of the picture. Some people like to make a new picture look old by applying sepia tone. In restoring a photo I take away the sepia that time put on the picture. In most cases the sepia tone was not part of the photo. If the customer wants the aged look I can do that. Once the aged look disappears you have the photos that the previous owner had on the mantle once upon a time.

This photo I discovered was taken by a traveling photographer who roamed the countryside with the pony in tow. When a business would give him permission he set up the camera and waited for customers. I have talked to many older seniors who remembered the traveling photographer.

When I saw this photo I thought that was one lucky girl who owned her own pony. Didn't we all want our own pony?

Any photo seen on this site are available in a 5 x 7 format for $10 each. And yes, I do retouching. Tell me what you have for an estimate.

If you have a photo you think would look good here let me know.