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Mightaswell
Dec 4, 2003

Not now chief, I'm in the fuckin' zone.
Somewhere between found film and your own poo poo lies the stuff you had to scan for your family. Post neat-O photographs from those dusty boxes of slides and photo albums in your moms attic.

I'll start.



My grandpa Frank lived from 1916 to 1990. After WW2, he spent most of his career in the Canadian high arctic working for the territorial governments, starting as a land titles clerk in Yukon, culminating in becoming a Judge in the NWT. His box of slides was chillin at my Dads house since 1995, when he brought it over and asked me to scan and catalog them with him.

This is him:

The Mooser by Winston85, on Flickr

Here are some pictures of his:


Mike Comadina by Winston85, on Flickr
Mike Comadina, Pearl Harbor Bar, 1953 [Dawson City, Yukon, Canada]
Google says Mike becomes Mayor of Dawson City in 1970.



Duncan Pryde by Winston85, on Flickr

On the left is an honest to goodness igloo living Eskimo, circa 1968. A member of the last generation of truly nomadic first nations in Canada. On the right is certified badass Duncan Pryde.
Seriously, you need to read Duncan Pryde's wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_Pryde

Basically he is a Hudson's Bay Company fur trader, hunter, trapper, lexicographer and politician. He started writing the only known Inuktitut/English dictionary. He also fathered a ton of half Inuit children. My dad remembers having him over for dinner!


Wilf Brown by Winston85, on Flickr

1952
Wilf Brown was my Grandfathers boss and also a pretty cool looking dude. He was Yukon Commissioner, and then later deputy commissioner of the North West Territories. There's a building named after him in Iqualuit, Nuavut, Canada.


Pierre Trudeau by Winston85, on Flickr

Pierre Trudeau accpeting the gift of a Polar Bear head, 1968

And now for some cool pictures offered without comment:

Ottawa 1961 by Winston85, on Flickr

Florida 1979 by Winston85, on Flickr

C Rendall, H Dickson, Pearl Harbor, Dawson, 1953 by Winston85, on Flickr

Untitled by Winston85, on Flickr

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elgarbo
Mar 26, 2013

Rad idea for a thread. I'll be back with some photots my Dad took while SCUBA diving of an octopus attacking someone, when I get the chance.

Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

My father, after a series of odd jobs, became the photographer for the county coroner in 1964. After 4 years, he got tired of this for obvious reasons (he said he had second thoughts on one of his first jobs, which involved climbing into the backseat of a Volkswagen Beetle where a murder/suicide by shotgun had occurred) and moved onto the local newspaper.

The coroner still needed help on occasion, and pops obliged since he was usually on-scene anyway. This combined with his lack of organization made thumbing through family photos rather interesting; a few years ago I found a photo of my first day of school sandwiched between a car wreck and a woman who had been strangled and left by the side of the road.

I am, as of today, over 9,500+ negatives into scanning his archive with no end in sight. Working for a small local newspaper, there was occasionally crime or fire related drama; this particular instance was crime; a drug stop in the spring of 1992. He won a spot news photography press award for one of this series.




Sometimes the crime news was serious...


Sometimes it was kind of silly....


And sometimes it was some downright Mayberry poo poo (pictured: Highway Patrolmen trying, and failing miserably, to catch a horse that was somewhere it wasn't supposed to be)




Sometimes the news was political; the big dogs rarely came to town but plenty of governors showed up. Like the right honorable James Holshouser.


Sometimes a politician from another state would come by; like this humble peanut farmer, seen here speaking with folks in 1975


(no one thought much of it at the time; a year later, the local Democrat county commissioners and whatnot were beating down his door for copies of any photos they appeared in)

It wasn't just governors; there was an occasional Presidential visit to be posted later (Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton), or our local Senator, Sam Ervin. You may have heard of him; he was the chair of the Senate Watergate Committee.


Speaking of Watergate, here's Sen. Ervin watching TV locally on the evening of July 9, 1974. These photos may not have much in the way of art, but they're some of my favorites. It's not often in backwater North Carolina that you get to witness history in the presence of those who are making it.



The other thing that brought the famous to the area: golf. The Colgate World Open especially. Fred MacMurray (of "My Three Sons" and "Flubber") and Cliff Robertson (Spider-Man's Uncle Ben, PT-109's JFK) came out for one. Later we'll see Don Knotts. Contain your applause.



But that sort of event was rare. There's a lot more everyday accidents (traffic accidents, getting hit by lightning)...

Linked due to possibly :nws: dead body partially visible

Bad (if beautiful) weather...





And on slow news days (or weeks; the paper was went from once a week to three times a week during the 1968-1990 time period of my scans thus far), the requisite landscapes...



....or my favorite "Slow News Day" category, people just being people.



On very rare occasions, news photography and family photography intersected in weird ways. For instance, here's little old me in 1986, looking rather annoyed to be dragged out of bed at 3:30am (since my mom was at work and leaving me alone would be irresponsible, after all) to watch Sherriff's Deputies chop up a moonshine still in the woods somewhere.


I'll post more later, but for now, enjoy this photo of one of dad's friends, an 8x10 of which hung in the living room when I was a child and gave me nightmares.

(this actually ran in the paper for some reason; the week it came out, this same friend of dad's, while out driving, saw two boys on a corner hawking papers. They looked at him, he made this expression, they both started shouting "IT'S HIM" and ran down the street)

iSheep
Feb 5, 2006

by R. Guyovich
Maybe this counts, maybe it doesn't... My Grandpa owned a lion when my mother was a child, I guess this is the only photo they have of it:



My attempt at retouch:

Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

Q: How does one sum up small-town 1981?
A: By looking at these photos and imagining that the synth solo from "Tom Sawyer" is playing from huge, unseen speakers.

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007



holy poo poo everything about that dude on the left owns

timrenzi574
Sep 11, 2001

DJExile posted:

holy poo poo everything about that dude on the left owns

It's real life Wooderson!

feigning interest
Jun 22, 2007

I just hate seeing anything go to waste.
That's what I like about digital photographs; I get older but they stay the same age

basch
May 24, 2014

Awesome thread, awesome pics. This stuff is making me want to try shooting b&w

Spedman
Mar 12, 2010

Kangaroos hate Hasselblads
Here's a bunch of Grandad photos and one Dad photo. Grandad used to shoot quite a bit with his Kodak Retina apparently.


Living in the very remote north-west Queensland there were animals around:




And a orphaned joey who was the family pet:



Grandma in full 1950's mode, rad frames:



And the dad photo, he and his best mate shooting each other, in full 1970's Aussie bloke mode:

deaders
Jun 14, 2002

Someone felt sorry enough for me to change my custom title.
These are rad, keep posting them.

Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

Let's see what else was going on July 4th, 1981.

Slow-motion Americana shots from a Michael Bay movie?



Oh no, look out Parachutist #1!!!!


She's okay, folks.


Maybe Parachutist #2 will do better


well, gently caress. He's okay, folks.


I post this not for any activity in the picture, but because it amuses me that dad's weird self-portrait hung on the wall in his favorite bar.


Let's check in on another local parade, circa 1976. Four-term NC governor Jim Hunt during his first term? Check.


Grand Marshal/Hall-of-Famer Catfish Hunter, for some reason? Check.


Strangely multicultural (for 1976 anyway) Minutemen? Check.


The Lil' Black Panthers? ....Check?


Well, at least these guys weren't invited (circa....1994. :sigh: )
http://i.imgur.com/pamjKa8l.jpg

Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

In smaller towns and more rural areas, the most newsworthy thing in a week is usually a car wreck. I'll spare you the gory ones (and believe me there's more than a few), but remember these photos from fatal wrecks the next time someone tells you how much better/safer/stronger cars were in the 60s and 70s.





Of course, when you hit a building and cause the facade to collapse on your car, not much is going to help you period (yes, the old lady who did this is still in the car in these photos. No, you cannot see her. No, it was not pretty at all when the bricks were moved.)



The other problem with older cars? They're not the most reliable things in the world (nor do their drivers appreciate seeing a snickering photographer documenting this fact)


Fun Fact: out of 9,936 negative scans that I've tagged and categorized thus far, 807 of them are wrecks (not counting plane crashes and train derailments). Speaking of plane crashes, enjoy this one for the fact that it contains the most stereotypical southern lawman that ever lived:

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


Rev. Bleech_ posted:

Speaking of plane crashes, enjoy this one for the fact that it contains the most stereotypical southern lawman that ever lived:


I can hear his drawl already :allears:

and goddamn those are insane

spf3million
Sep 27, 2007

hit 'em with the rhythm

Rev. Bleech_ posted:

The other problem with older cars? They're not the most reliable things in the world (nor do their drivers appreciate seeing a snickering photographer documenting this fact)

This is amazing

coronalight
Oct 12, 2006

asdfghjkl;
Rev., how on earth have you not shared these with us sooner?

They are great. I'm looking forward to everything you can post in the future.

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


Seriously, Rev, please keep posting what you can. These are awesome.

Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

DJExile posted:

I can hear his drawl already :allears:

and goddamn those are insane

I asked pops if he left the scene for a Diablo sandwich and a Dr. Pepper, but he didn't get it.

scotty posted:

Rev., how on earth have you not shared these with us sooner?

They are great. I'm looking forward to everything you can post in the future.

Thanks; I've still got plenty to comb through for postables, so more are coming. The reason I haven't posted these sooner is because goddamn it takes forever to scan 10,000 photos with a single-frame film scanner.

The archives stop circa 1997, though I have a long way to go before I get there; the next year the paper finally went color and I'm not sure what they did with the negatives for those. Frankly I find the color stuff way less interesting...even dad admits it "sucks the mystery out". About 2001 they made the switch to digital; while still not as interesting as the black and white stuff, there's still some good ones.




Hilariously, this is one of the most controversial front page photos the paper ever ran. Pearl-clutchin' bluehairs were mighty offended at what this dog was doing.


Anyhow, back to the black and white archives in the next post.

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


Rev. Bleech_ posted:

Hilariously, this is one of the most controversial front page photos the paper ever ran. Pearl-clutchin' bluehairs were mighty offended at what this dog was doing.


Anyhow, back to the black and white archives in the next post.

i fuckin' love everything in this picture

Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

DJExile posted:

i fuckin' love everything in this picture

That lady was a regular there. Always two sandwiches, one for her, one for her dog.

This is the first time I ever saw somebody die. I wasn't with him when he took this, but my schoolbus passed this scene right as the truck caught fire (the ladder was extended and caught the power lines).


Random People Category: People in Mid-Air Edition




After this (the July 4th parade of 1993), this guy planted this sign in his front yard. It's still there today.


From the "Caught Creeping" series:


PONG FUEL


Landscapes




And a rare color shot from 1974. Yes, this is a staged "drug deal" shot, featuring real weed. The joke is, that's the local police station they're doing it in front of. I have probably two dozen of these shots featuring ten different people; it's apparently the thing you did in the 70s. People also used to enjoy going into the station to use the water fountain with weed on them. Memorably, one guy didn't conceal it well enough while pulling his "lol I have weed in a police station" gag...a passing cop grabbed the edge of the baggie sticking out of his back pocket and arrested him on the spot.

Downer alert: at least one person in this photo was dead of a drug overdose five years later.

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


these are all fascinating and I love the stories behind them. Pong Fuel kid is the best.

Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

DJExile posted:

these are all fascinating and I love the stories behind them.

My father can't remember what he had for breakfast or where we stayed on our last vacation. Pick a random photo from the early 1970s to present and his memory is drat near...well, photographic. Only twice when I've asked him has he said "I have no idea where that is or when", and in one of those instances we discovered it was someone else's photo, he just developed it. It's weird, but has been very very handy when it comes to meta tags and organization.

smoke weed everyday, preferably in front of the police station.

Rev. Bleech_ fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Feb 20, 2015

pootiebigwang
Jun 26, 2008
This thread rules.

DJExile posted:

Pong Fuel kid is the best.

Also this. That photo is incredible.

wedgie deliverer
Oct 2, 2010

DJExile posted:

Pong Fuel kid is the best.

Portrait of the Goon as Young Man

MrBlandAverage
Jul 2, 2003

GNNAAAARRRR
How about some cool mom pics?

My mom traveled around the world in 1967-1968 with her first husband. From Paris they drove a Citroen 2CV via Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan, all the way to India, where they sold the 2CV to buy boat tickets to Singapore. There my mom bought a Nikomat FT (which I still have and occasionally use), which she used to take Kodachromes in the other places they visited - Bali, Cambodia, Laos, and Japan. I got a V500 in 2009 for the express purpose of scanning the Kodachromes, and having the scanner is actually part of what encouraged me to pick up film photography again.

I wish she'd had the Nikomat in Iran and Afghanistan :sigh:

Whole roast pig in Bali:


Fabric workshop in Bali:


Laotian mother:


Japanese mother:


Octopus for sale in Japan:


Train derailment in Japan:

ant mouth
Oct 28, 2007

This is great! It reminds me of Martin Parr's photos.

Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

MrBlandAverage posted:

Whole roast pig in Bali:


Proper barbecue is the closest we have to a universal language.

Crime story time.
1990; a man is shot in a convenience store parking lot. The investigation is a bit stalled because no one saw anything and there's not much in the way of physical evidence.


A few days later, the ol' man stops at a local creek to check out the water level and whatnot (spring and summer meant fishing every Saturday morning when I was a kid, and thanks to his job taking him anywhere and everywhere in the county it was a good way to find new spots).

Something catches his attention in the weeds next to the creek; a wallet. He walks down the embankment and picks it up for a closer look; the ID inside belongs to the man who was shot in the convenience store parking lot. He drives to the nearest payphone and calls the cops.



...and gets enlisted for a little bit of evidence gathering. Between the tire treads and fingerprints all over the dude's personal effects and discarded trash, they get a suspect. He eventually goes to prison for murder.

1974; a woman has been shot. Police and detectives arrive on-scene.

The turning point for the investigation comes when...the murderer comes strolling down from up the street to turn himself in. Thanks, pal!




This one was, I believe, a natural death...I post it only because of the majestic hair on display.


"Securing the crime scene" wasn't that much of a thing in the 70s as I found out. Take this instance, where a hunter found skeletal remains in the woods. The cops on-scene ask my dad to poke around while he's shooting and tell them if he finds anything (a necklace was what he found while strolling about). This stretch of woods was apparently to our area what Leakin Park is to Baltimore; plenty of bodies dumped, and at least one "hunting accident".




The police once showed up to raid a speakeasy-type place; all I know about it is they had no liquor license despite being a pretty popular dive bar that you could only get in if the right people vouched for you. Anyway, word got to the owners (dad insinuated that more than one local cop was among the clientele) and when the cops arrived ready to raid the place....they instead spent an hour trying to get in through all the locks that had appeared on the door overnight. When they did, there wasn't a drop of booze in the place.


Until Sunday, remember kids, smoke weed at the police station every day.

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


Rev. Bleech_ posted:

Until Sunday, remember kids, smoke weed at the police station every day.


that's a pro rear end photobomb

Getting basically deputized to take crime scene photos is amazing. I know i'm repeating myself but these stories are the best.

Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

That's what happens when you listen to the scanner 24/7...you beat the coroner's photographer or save the cops from doing their own photos. Of course that all ended in the 90s, now it doesn't matter how any cops you know, you ain't getting in there. But as some future photos will graphically demonstrate, they used to let just any lookie-loo stomp around a scene.

Dren
Jan 5, 2001

Pillbug

Can we still talk about how rad kid on the left is?

Spedman
Mar 12, 2010

Kangaroos hate Hasselblads
This has quickly become my favourite thread, keep posting rad family pics everyone.

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


Dren posted:

Can we still talk about how rad kid on the left is?

that guy is my spirit animal

Fragrag
Aug 3, 2007
The Worst Admin Ever bashes You in the head with his banhammer. It is smashed into the body, an unrecognizable mass! You have been struck down.
Last September I visited my family in Indonesia. There, I asked my grandmother whether there were photos of my grandfather, who died ten years before I was born. After the coup d'etat in the mid-sixties, he was detained as a political prisoner for fifteen years. He was released in 1980 but died shortly after as a result of health complications from his captivity.
The pictures she showed were the first images I had seen of my grandfather, and I'm pretty sure they are the only ones that exist. There are more pictures in the album but these are the strongest, especially next to each other.


A family picture before he was detained. That's my mother on my grandmother's lap.


This is a portrait of my mother, I'm guessing roughly five years old. I'm not completely sure but I think this was taken shortly after my grandfather was detained. My grandmother told me stories of how my mother would ask her 'Kapan bapak pulang?' or 'When is dad coming home?'

I'm currently planning on going back to Indonesia this year, to start a project on Indonesia. I'm going to then properly digitalize the pictures in the album and use them as an underlying base for it.

Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

This caused a bit of a flap, to put it politely. But pops and this cop are totally bros now :glomp:

Not knowing what actually happened here, I'm going to just assume it was load-bearing drywall


On to the fire folder. This model of car had a lot of magnesium in the engine block. They apparently did not teach the rookie that putting water on burning magnesium is among the lousiest ideas.



Maybe he was concentrating on his parade float idea when they taught that in firefighter school


This shot was another NC Press Award winner


But I actually like some of the other shots from the same fire better




One evening at the bar, dad got a call (the Coroner knew if you couldn't get him at work or at home, Larry's was the next best bet) about a newsworthy fatal house fire. Since he was only a couple of beers in, he went.
Remember what I said about how they weren't all that concerned about keeping a scene clear back then?

Here we see the coroner looking down at the charred remains of the occupant...and the lookie-loos peering in the window like it was a basic day.

Again, not a framed photo in the background, just some neighborhood kid wanting to peep the Crispy Critter on the floor.


His work done, dad returned to the bar and resumed drinking beer and watching basketball. He wondered why the bartender wasn't as chatty as usual...ten minutes later he looked from side to side and noticed that everyone on either side of him had cleared out and moved somewhere else in the bar.

Only then did he realize that it's probably a good idea to change clothes after you've spent some time with a freshly-burned corpse.

On that cheerful note, I'll stop for now with another in the "ironic license plate" series

(in case the resize made it too hard to read: "DON'T LAUGH, IT'S PAID FOR")

Huxley
Oct 10, 2012



Grimey Drawer
Mom had me scan in my grandfather's slides. Among a lot of "here is everyone standing in front of a car, standing in front of a house" shots, there were some gems. These are all either Kodachome or Ektachrome ranging from the mid 60s to mid 70s. Amusingly, almost every picture of my grandfather was out of focus. Much like me, he couldn't get anybody else in the family to focus a camera.


img384 by mattphilpott734, on Flickr


img464 by mattphilpott734, on Flickr


img488 by mattphilpott734, on Flickr


img699 by mattphilpott734, on Flickr


img344 by mattphilpott734, on Flickr

They took a trip out west in the early 70s that looked amazing flipping through the slides, but it turns out my grandfather was so intent on making time in the car he forced my uncle (10-11 at the time) to shoot these beautiful, sprawling landscapes out the window of a moving RV. Almost every single one is useless.

Also in that album for the NASCAR minded, some very early shots of Martinsville Speedway.

Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

Huxley posted:

Mom had me scan in my grandfather's slides. Among a lot of "here is everyone standing in front of a car, standing in front of a house" shots, there were some gems. These are all either Kodachome or Ektachrome ranging from the mid 60s to mid 70s.

that color tho :allears:


The first recorded Zatanna cosplay

DJExile
Jun 28, 2007


Those firefighter pictures are boss as gently caress.

Also drat Huxley those Kodachromes are the best. That downtown street one and the two portraits at the end own.

404notfound
Mar 5, 2006

stop staring at me

Loving everything here. I might see what old stuff my parents have lying around the next time I go visit.

torgeaux
Dec 31, 2004
I serve...

Rev. Bleech_ posted:

Q: How does one sum up small-town 1981?
A: By looking at these photos and imagining that the synth solo from "Tom Sawyer" is playing from huge, unseen speakers.



I graduated high school in 1981, and I knew all these people. Or, our local versions of them. I was not the dude on the left.

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Rev. Bleech_
Oct 19, 2004

~OKAY, WE'LL DRINK TO OUR LEGS!~

I love this particular subgenre of photo; the one where I ask "is that a dead body?" and he says "no, that's <so and so>, who was drunk and/or weird enough to take a nap there."


At first I thought it was crime news; then I found out it was actually just a wreck and this dude was being transported in a cop car that was involved in the wreck


Speaking of cops and wrecks, the cop involved in this nasty wreck from 1979 survived and returned to work fairly quickly. He was still a local cop when he was killed in a motorcycle accident during a parade in 2013.


I didn't even realize until much later, when pops told me, that that was none other Francis Bavier, Aunt Bee from the Andy Griffith Show, sitting there.

DID YOU KNOW? The Andy Griffith Show is pretty much a religion in NC; even the non-observers know "'Sorry' won't bring back those birds' momma, Op" the way atheists know the gist of the bible.
DID YOU KNOW? Francis Bavier had a reputation as a real bitch, though dad says she wasn't particularly bitchy (nor particularly nice either) at this event.

Non-Human celebrity time:


This monkey was apparently a big enough deal that....his owner/trainer whatever took him around a bunch of downtown banks and restaurants for reasons I still don't really fathom.

Random "people being people" shots, leading off with another prizewinner and personal fave (whose negative was, unfortunately, not well looked-after):





(Great photo? No, but the kid's face with the football kills me)

And finally, a damaged negative that got even more damaged as I cleaned it that I posted in the scanner thread, turning a run of the mill landscape into a stygian horror, a peek into the vast black islands of space mankind was never meant to explore :kheldragar:

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