Archive for the ‘Photography History’ Category

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USC Libraries Amass World’s Largest Collection Of Digital Images Documenting SoCal History

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

USC Digital Library Represents Collaboration Among Historical Societies,

Newspapers, And More

Organizations Work Together For Preservation And Accessibility

The photo seen here was taken at the 1951 tree lighting ceremony at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, and scanned to digital for inclusion in the University of Southern California’s vast Digital Library. The USC library system has set out to “select, collect, preserve, and make accessible” an enormous collection of unique materials, including high resolution digital photographs, oral histories and sound recordings, moving images, maps, documents, physical objects, and more. This wealth of media is organized within the USC Digital Library, which includes metadata to support research. The digital collection helps fulfill the university’s mission to provide an online gateway to research resources about Los Angeles and Southern California.

Some of the high quality digital images accessible from the USC Digital Library website are “on loan” from collaborating institutions that have agreed to share their collections. Together these institutions have contributed to the creation of the largest and most valuable archival collection of digital media related to the history and culture of Los Angeles and the surrounding areas. The USC Digital Library provides a powerful infrastructure to create the host environment for these collaborators, all of which benefit from working toward the common goals of preservation and accessibility. The digital collections comprise a host of materials from the USC Libraries, as well as from various historical societies, other libraries, newspapers, and other organizations with rich collections of historical artifacts relating to the Southern California, the Western United States, and the Pacific Rim. Particular emphasis has been placed on artifacts from these regions, though the collections are by no means limited to this part of the country.

The USC Digital Library spans a wide range of media, including audio and video recordings, but visual media compose the bulk of the collection. The digital archive includes thousands of photographs, drawings, illuminated manuscripts, posters, prints, maps, rare illustrated books, and more – all scanned to digital at high resolution to capture every detail. The USC Digital Library continues to grow as navigation is enhanced and the collections evolve.

Visit the USC Digital Library to explore this amazing collection.

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Manhattan Beach Historical Society Hopes To Digitize Historical Newspaper Archive

Monday, January 9th, 2012

Local Historians Hope Digitization Will Make Newspaper Archive

Accessible To All

Archive Documents A Century Of Local History

Meet Gary McAulay. As a board member of the Manhattan Beach Historical Society, Gary is one of the lucky few who currently have access to the Society’s small storage space, which is nestled between the men and women’s restrooms at Polliwog Park and filled with a century’s worth of Manhattan Beach history. The newspapers are kept in bound archives on three small bookshelves, each one four rows tall. The old papers document Manhattan Beach history, starting with the city’s founding in the year 1912.

In the photo seen here, McAulay sifts through the papers, stopping at the headline “Rain storm of week un-paralleled in beach history,” on the front page of the March 1, 1913 publication of the Manhattan Beach News. Another day’s top story simple led with ““Popular girl will soon be married.” McAulay and his colleagues at the Manhattan Beach Historical Society hope that the collection of historical newspapers will soon find a new home, as plans for the new Manhattan Beach library continue to develop. Local historians recently met with representatives from the Los Angeles County library to discuss the feasibility of bringing the collection to the new library, and digitizing it via a type of photo scanning technology.

The collection was moved about two years ago from its former home in the Historical Society’s cottage museum to its current, less prestigious and less accessible spot in the park bathroom storage space. This move was decided upon by the members of the society, who feared that a fire or other natural disaster affecting the cottage museum might destroy these precious articles of history. The papers have been “sadly inaccessible for some time,” said McAulay. “We have a history in this town. When you put it out there, people say, ‘Hey, that’s pretty cool,’ and become more interested.” Even when the papers were in the Historical Society’s museum, they were only accessible to regular folks during the museum’s six hours of public access each week.

Ultimately, the Historical Society would like to use digital photo scanning technology to preserve the papers and make them available to the public on a website, but the funding just isn’t there, McAulay said. Each of the historical society’s 150 members pays $20 each year in dues. Scholars at Cal State Dominguez Hills have expressed interest in obtaining the archives to keep in the university’s regional history collection. But local historians are hesitant to let go of the collection, fearing that that they would be too far away for Manhattan Beach citizens to see and enjoy. “I’m concerned that once it goes away from town, the only people who would ever go out there are the most dedicated of historians,” said McAulay.

Some have suggested that the collection could be housed in a glass case in the new Manhattan Beach library. Visitors could sift through photocopies, or view the actual collection with assistance from a librarian. County librarian Margaret Todd said she’d ask her staff to look into grant opportunities to fund digitization of the archives. “I’d rather digitize them and have them available that way,” said Todd. “Newspaper is fragile, once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

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New Service Uses Meta-Data On Images To Track Stolen Camera

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

CameraTrace by GadgetTrak Lets You Search The Web For

Images Taken On Your Digital Camera

Benefits From The Digital Age Yet Again

Last summer, photographer John Heller made headlines when he recovered his stolen camera and lenses using a new technology from GadgetTrak, a company based in Portland, Oregon that specializes in theft recovery and data protection solutions for mobile devices such as laptops and cell phones. While on assignment for Getty Images, Heller had lost his prized Nikon D3 digital camera and several lenses (valued at over $9,000) to a thief at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. Using GadgetTrak’s new CameraTrace service, then in a beta testing phase called Camera Serial Search, Heller searched the web for images embedded with a digital serial number that matched his stolen camera. He found several digital images that had been recently posted to the online photo-sharing site Flickr, and gave this information to the police. The police tracked the images via Facebook, to another professional photographer who had unwittingly purchased the stolen gear. The gear had actually been sold twice, first on Craigslist and later on e-Bay.

GadgetTrak has recently announced that CameraTrace is now available to consumers who want to safeguard their digital cameras. The service uses the meta-data attached to digital images to tag the photos with the camera’s serial number. By creating a digital “identity” for your camera, CameraTrace allows you to search the worldwide Web for any image captured on the device. If your camera has been stolen, you can even use the system to file a police report. The GadgetTrak service even includes individual help throughout the process of finding and reclaiming your equipment. The company will even speak with local law enforcement to plead your case and explain the use of its technology.

CameraTrace users pay a one-time fee of $10 per camera for registration in the service. All Web searches and subsequent services are free, including an image-monitoring service which scans photos Facebook, Flickr, etc. to see if anyone is using your copyrighted images without permission. For serious photographers, this added bonus might easily be worth the price of admission for CameraTrace. But even if your camera cost only a few hundred dollars, CameraTrace may be a cost-effective form of insurance against loss and theft.

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Broadway Photographer Leo Friedman Dies

Thursday, December 15th, 2011

Leo Friedman Dies At 92

Broadway Photographer Was Known For Capturing Movement In Still Photos

Photographer Leo Friedman, who made his career capturing Broadway stars in action during the golden age of the 1950s and 1960s, has died. He was 92. The photo seen here, which was scanned to digital by the New York Times, is one of Friedman’s most famous snapshots. It depicts the effervescent Carol Lawrence and Larry Kert as lovebirds Tony and Maria in “West Side Story.” Taken on a street near Friedman’s New York studio, the photo became the enduring emblem of the musical after having been chosen to appear on the covers of the playbill and original cast recording. It remains a signature image of Friedman’s impressive career.

Friedman’s career was at its height during the peak period of Broadway glamour. The 1950s and 1960s were also significant in the history of photography, as the expanded professional use of 35 millimeter photography allowed photographers to capture a sense of motion in their still pictures. Friedman was a ubiquitous presence in and around New York theaters during this time, photographing more than 800 shows including “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Cabaret,” “My Fair Lady,” and more. His photos show Lucille Ball marching with a bass drum in “Wildcat,” Laurence Olivier hoofing in “The Entertainer,” and Barbra Streisand making her Broadway debut in “I Can Get It for You Wholesale.” Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Bob Fosse, Sammy Davis Jr., and Lena Horne were just a few of the stars immortalized on stage by Friedman’s uniquely in-the-moment photographs.

As a freelance photographer, Friedman made it his specialty to capture actors in motion, both in rehearsal and during performance. He was hired by all the top magazines and newspapers, press agents, and producers, all of whom appreciated his ability to depict the movement of acting. When hired by a producer to take official photographs of a show, he would photograph a show scene by scene, but going backward from the end after a full performance. Friedman often attributed his success to his ability to work with high-maintenance stars. Many stars, such as Katharine Hepburn, developed personal friendships with Friedman after working with him professionally.

To see a gallery of Leo Friedman’s photos that have been scanned to digital by the New York Times, go to LA Times.

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Washington State’s Rural Artifacts Scanned To Digital For History Website

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

Rural Heritage Project Aims To Preserve And Share Washington History

Historic Photos And Documents Tell Forgotten Stories

For the last five years, the Washington State Library has been sponsoring the Rural Heritage Project, a joint effort among the smallest libraries in the state to gather and preserve community history. The project is the brainchild of Gary Bortel, a Westport librarian who now works for the Washington State Library. Bortel had the idea to collect the cultural buried treasure from Washington’s rural communities – old photos and other documents – and scan the photos to digital in order to build a website accessible to all. This would allow Washingtonians to share their heritage with the world.

The collections include a wide variety of historic treasures, including formal portraits of town residents from more than a century ago, and photos of various rural towns before they were transformed, first by irrigation and then by modernization. Of particular note are the postcards depicting historic floods. Photos show town barbershops and bakeries being lapped by encroaching waves for the only time in recorded history. These clues to the histories of the state’s smallest communities have been collected from basements, attics, thrift stores, and garage sales. Many of these treasures have been lost, forgotten, or in the possession of just one family or person for 100 years or more. In order to allow everyone to share in the richness of these historical artifacts, some suggested a museum.

But Bortel realized there was another solution that would allow even more people to enjoy the history of rural Washington. That solution was of course to scan the historic documents and photos to digital, and put them on a website for all to enjoy. Washingtonians were encouraged to retrieve their own personal artifacts so they could be scanned or photographed for inclusion on the website. Bortel pitched his idea to colleagues at the state library. Eventually, a $50,000 annual grant from the federal Institute of Museum and Library Service led to the founding of the Rural Heritage project in 2006, with the goal of preserving and sharing pieces of Washington State history that might otherwise be lost. Now, some 25 libraries across Washington State have historic documents online, and seven more have begun compiling their collections.

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Ask Yourself: How Do I Scan My Photos To Preserve History

Monday, July 13th, 2009

A Wartime Salvage Campaign Shows Why It’s Key To Start A Plan: How to Scan My Photos Today

Historical Photos Survive In Digital Form Today

 

Our lives would be different if not for the amazing, trail-blazing female role models, activists and leaders who came before us.

 

To celebrate International Women’s Day, held every March 8, the Library of Congress compiled nearly two dozen photos from the 1910s to 1940s. They reflect the strength, spirit and resilience of such women.

 

One in particular stands out: A shot of Annette Del Sur in 1942. Smartly dressed in a gray skirt suit, Annette is participating – actually, she’s publicizing – a salvage campaign at Douglas Aircraft Company in southern California. A glance at her should spark the thought: I need to find out how to scan my photos. It’s a critical reminder of why the past is so important.

 

In the picture, Annette is at the Douglas Aircraft Company, which had just opened a 1.4-million-square-foot warplane factory in Long Beach the year before (November 1941). The facility was considered cutting edge, thanks in part to the air-conditioned interiors, a novelty back then for a manufacturing plant. Douglas was the country’s biggest manufacturer of aircrafts at one point, but it eventually faltered and merged with another entity to become McDonnell Douglas Corporation in 1967.

 

Alfred T. Palmer took the photograph of Annette, a slim, curly-haired brunette. She’s smiling in the image. Around her head and neck, she’s sporting what look to be recycled pieces of metal. (They would no doubt be considered art today!) If this image had just been snapped, we imagine Annette would have told herself, I need to know how to scan my photos. Sending them away to a professional company to be digitally converted and easily and safely saved is a wonderful way to hold onto such a keepsake.

 

The photo of Annette portrays a young woman happily reusing and repurposing items. With all the talk these days about living in a sustainable manner and saving our planet, this photo feels incredibly fresh and relevant in 2009. It’s a significant reminder that our eco-friendly efforts are not new, that nothing should be so disposable. Rather, our efforts are part of a cycle we must continue for the sake of future generations.

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15 Photos – 15 Lakers’ Championships – A NBA Dynasty

Friday, June 19th, 2009

We’re a pretty hard working bunch here at ScanDigital, but every year in late May and June you’ll catch a handful of us making sure we’re getting out of the office with plenty of time to make the NBA Finals – ESPECIALLY when the Lakers are playing in the finals.

We even had two employees take the day off to attend the championship parade.  So in honor of the 2009 NBA Champion LA Lakers, here are photos from each Finals they’ve ever won.  You’ll be scrolling down for a bit – there are 15 of them (16 if you count the championship they won before they moved into the NBA).

1948

1949

1950

1952

1953

1954

1980

1982

1985

1987

1988

2000

2001

2002

2009

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Where We’re Coming From…

Monday, November 24th, 2008

I found my old 35mm camera again this morning. I haven’t used it since college—but it’s been lovingly packed up and carried with my wherever I move, even if it’s to just sit on a shelf or in the back of my closet.

I have two digital cameras which see far more use, but nothing will ever make me give up that old camera.

Two reasons: it was my first real, grown-up, utterly manual camera—everything this camera did was my choice, good or bad—and my grandfather gave me this camera as a gift before I left for college. It was a requirement that all incoming photo students own a 35mm camera with an internal light meter. The camera was given to him several years before, but he had another which he preferred.

The camera itself is a Rolleiflex and is a workhorse of German engineering that will quite likely outlive the 35mm film format. I keep it in a mismatched leather case that doesn’t quite close because the front of the original fell off during a trip to the zoo and dropped into the wolf enclosure. I remember there being a moment where I was watching the case fall and thought, “I could still grab it…but then I might drop the camera…” The wolves could have the case. I spent a majority of my time in college with this camera to my eye—even without it I saw the world through a frame: how would I photograph this? What aperture? What speed? Each and every moment could be a perfect image just waiting to be caught.

Time seems different when you can press it into film. There is something frozen about a photograph, something still and quiet. You have to slow down if you want to look at old albums or slides—you have to specifically seek them out. It’s the same to taking pictures on film—you have to move deliberately to some extent. If there’s anything to call our lives in 2008, slow is far from it, and stopping everything to try a find your family’s old pictures isn’t as appealing. Especially not when digital cameras enable us to have years of images and memories just a few mouse clicks away.

Does that mean that we have any desire to get rid of these old photographs, negatives, or slides? Not at all, just like I would never even dream of getting rid of my grandfather’s camera. These are history—more than that, these are our histories. One of a kind and utterly priceless.

When was the last time you looked through your stacks of old photographs? Many of us even have inherited drawers or boxes filled from our parents, and their parents as well. All filled with small windows into the past that we might not have ever seen. Wouldn’t you like to?

This is where ScanDigital is ready to help you.

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The Future of History – A Slide Scanning Project

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008

As some of you may know based on my bio at ScanDigital, I was a history major at Dartmouth and spent a number of years working in commercial real estate investment banking. So when the City of Pasadena called us to bid on a large historical architecture preservation project, I was particularly excited and honored. From a business perspective, this was obviously the type of call we love to receive. From a personal perspective, this type of project is particularly interesting to me. In my free time, I enjoy reading about architecture, both old and new.

For those of you who may not live in Southern California, Pasadena has one of the most active historic preservation societies in the country and the City is home to numerous famous residential and commercial properties. The bid process involved scanning a small group of slides and about a month ago ScanDigital was pleased to learn that we were awarded the project.

Our team recently begun scanning slides that document many of the historic properties in Pasadena. In addition to the slide scanning work we are performing, we will optimize the images digitally and, perhaps most importantly, we will be tagging the images with metadata in order to create a searchable database of images. The conversion of these slides to digital, to me, represents a new trend in historical preservation and archiving. Prior to our work scanning the slides they sat relatively useless in the basement of Pasadena’s permit office. Once the project is complete, residents of the city will be able to enjoy an easily search-able and usable version of these historic slides. It will be a great way for residents, old and new, to gain better access to their City’s history.

We look forward to working on projects like this as more and more cities across the country seek to move into the digital age, clear their offices of old materials and preserve this historic material for future generations. In times past, discovering historical information involved a lot of digging and searching, with new digital capabilities the future of history will be far more manageable and accessible. I am truly proud to be working on the Pasadena project and excited to see the end result of photographic database we will help them create.

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It’s All In The Eyes

Sunday, October 21st, 2007

In my first semester of attending photography school full time I had a professor who was a very successful working photographer. I actually wondered sometimes why he taught. Especially after visiting his home studio in Venice. There was no doubt that he had done exceptionally well for himself. Anyway, during our first week of class he told us that we had to put together a book with tear sheets from magazines, et cetera that we liked. Now, that was broad yet, specific to the individual. He went on to explain that it could be anything for any reason. Whether you liked the lighting, the colors, it turned you on or repulsed you for whatever reason. It could be a photographer’s work that you admired or hated.

The exercise later revealed his reasoning. He had us take a lupe and look at the eeyes_zoom8_cl250_zoom4_cl250_zoom2_cl250.gifyes of the subject in the photograph; especially studio photographs. By doing this it was a bit confusing at first but then completely obvious. You could see the lighting in the subject’s eyes. By studying the eyes you can generally determine where the light source was coming from and the shape of the light source. You could see if it was round, square, rectangular and the size and angle of the light. His suggestion was to find a photograph that you liked, look at the eyes, determine how it was lit and duplicate it. After recreating it, ask yourself what would I do different and do it.

It was a great idea and learning experience for any beginning photographer and/or student. It’s easy to look at something and think to one’s self that, “I can do that”. Well, this exercise was a way to prove it. I made such an attempt at duplicating a beauty shot I saw and it was difficult but exciting all at once. Nonetheless, it worked.

Currently and forever the only slight problem with the exercise is the blessing and curse of advancing technology in photography especially as it relates to Photoshop. A great tool for so many things whether creative and/or purely maintenance on photographs it can limit one’s learning experience in the aforementioned example. Primarily because the eyes can now be retouched to the extent that it makes it very difficult if not at times impossible to see the lighting scheme in the eyes.

Alas there are still great painters to study. Light is light and it hasn’t changed much over the centuries. Paintings are like photographs in that it takes a 2-dimensional medium and by using or manipulating light creates a 3-dimensional piece of work. The information is all around us. You can look at the way the light falls on your date or mate’s face when sitting at dinner or how the light bounces off a building in the late afternoon creating a warm and soft glow. The information is still in the eyes, your eyes.

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