As I go through the 50 some-odd of my parents’ home movies and the roughly 500 slides, there’s one bit of advice I have for family photographers. For goodness sake leave some sort of annotations or journal of what your videos and still images represent. It’s darned hard for your heirs to figure out 70 years later.
And I’ve scarcely begun capturing and cataloguing the still photographs. Some of those go back 140 years. I some cases I can’t figure out whether a portrait is of a family friend or a silent era matinee idol. How many of you can recognize the movie stars or vaudeville stars of the nineteen teens?
I know that a few of the photos in Mama’s photo album document Edward Flanagan and Neely Edwards horsing around in front of someone’s house during s visit to St. Louis. Mama pointed them out to me. I later recognized them in the Hallroom Boys comedy silent movie shorts DVD that I mentioned to you.
I sympathize. I can hardly remember where I took some of my old slides from 30 years ago. I’ve gotten better with digital pictures thanks to software tags.
Funny, I’ve gotten worse with digital. Seems the easier things get, the lazier I get.
The mystery photos from the past are frustrating but can be fun too, when those with an interest try to puzzle over them. I even ‘met’ (virtually) a distant cousin who helped solve one mystery, and shared some of her family photos that included a couple of my ancestors.