Throwback Thursday

If you are on social media, you know that today people post old photos and remember loved ones. This is a photo of my little sister with our great grandmother “Mama Benfield, and me.”

Our family had a print of this, which is how I made a copy of the photo.

I put the photo on a table and, using a tripod, set the camera parallel to the table. I put two hot shoe flashes off to the sides at 45º to the table. I got good exposure and custom white balance.

The custom white balance is to counteract any color bounce from the room.

Then I took a stack of photos and copied away shooting in RAW.

My grandfather R. Knolan Benfield

My grandmother Emma Hartsell Benfield

My mother, Bonita Benfield Leary

My sister Emma and my Dad David Leary with me

My sister Emma, my grandfather “Daddy B,” and grandmother “Nana B.”

I brought all the photos into Lightroom. I kept them in color and made adjustments using the sliders. Here is the first photo.

After I made all the adjustments using Temp and Tint, even for contrast control, I switched the photo to Black and White before exporting.

The good news with all this copy work is now they are digitized and searchable.

After I exported the images as JPEGs, I opened them with PhotoMechanic, which I prefer over Lightroom when working in metadata, and identified each photo in the caption. So now, for the first time, we know when for example, my mother had this photo taken of her.

Now on PC or Mac, when you search for “Bonita Leary 3rd Grade,” this photo will pop up in the search even if you don’t have the software to see the embedded text.

As you scan old slides and negatives and then make copies of your prints, be sure to add the text so they are searchable, and in the future, your family will know the who, what, where, why, and when for the photos. Identification will make them even more valuable to the generations after us.