Saturday, October 16, 2010

postheadericon Interruption: Sorting Negatives

Before I get to the second part of my lessons on Extraction, I have to write an add-on to my posts on Sorting Photos.

This week my new little electronic toy was delivered.  It is an affordable film and slide converter.  (mine is by IT. - Innovative Technology and ordered from Kim Komando's Store). 

I have a large plastic tub of negatives from who-knows-when.  I tried holding them up to the light, against a window, even used a light table but I can NOT figure out a picture from a negative.  I tried scanning on my printer-scanner and reversing the black and white but, most of the time, I still can't get a picture I would print.  I don't really want to scan all those negatives and print them or scrap them.  I do want to know where a negative is for a picture I remember and don't have as a print.  Most of all, I want to find my daughters' first prom photos.  They were among the first I took with an SLR camera, but the prints are all long gone.

Fortunately, many of the negatives are in the original envelopes from the printer.  The envelopes are not "safe" but the information is printed on a lot of them.  Some have the date handwritten by me on the envelope.  On some the developer included the date of developing on the envelope.  On some I had chosen to have the date appear on the photo, itself.  I know better now, but it was good back then.

I jumped in taking negatives out of the developers protective sleeves, and put them into photo-safe negative envelopes from Organizedphotos.Com.  In the product area is an area where you can buy JUST the negative envelopes.  I did that and also ordered a few more of the photo-safe plastic boxes that are a perfect fit to the envelopes.  I already have photos sorted and in those boxes (look at the header for this blog).

The negatives were soon, thanks to the viewer, almost all sorted and labeled with date (where i could figure it out) and subject matter.  I also described any picture that was outstanding and that I might want to scrap later and put an * in front of that description.  Right now the envelopes are in chronological order if the date is known.  I just stacked the rest to check more closely later.

Again, like with photos, negatives from a single developer were most likely all from the same time period.  So I labeled the date on those in pencil until I can be sure.

I am waiting for the new storage boxes.  When they come I will insert some photos of the finished project.

About Me

Forty Years of Scrapping

Long before it was popular, I was trying to decorate arrangements of photos and sentimental items. Here I want to share some of my personal history and more important, some ideas I have gleaned from more than 40 years of scrapping.

lauraloub

lauraloub
A granny with a camera and a computer

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