Page 203 - Mediapedia Mobile

“After I digitized everything onto a single DVD, everybody wants me to do the same for their memories. Yikes.”
PART III SHARING YOUR WORK
07_MP_234-277.indd 244-245
6/20/08
9:28:36 AM
GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN:
gear: Scanner, photo-editing program, blank DVDs, labels and cases for the final product.
PRESERVING AND CELEBRATING OLD PHOTOGRAPHS
budget: Less than $50. WORKFLOW
The rise of the digital world threatens to bury the snapshots, photos, and home movies of earlier generations. But these family treasures can be easily transferred onto the computer, which offers wonderful flexibility for reworking them. There are many ways to share reclaimed images: You can frame quality prints, make DVDs that archive your holdings, and create slide shows that breathe new life into old artifacts.
So, after years of my mother asking me to do something with these pictures and albums, I decided to bring them into the twenty-first century. —CC
Step 3. Compile into a slide show or video. After you have completed scanning and repairing, you will have a good knowledge of all the photos in your collection. Now is the time to import some of them into a slide-show application or video-editing program. Look for a structure for your piece: chronology, similar shots or locations, a short story about a family event. Add credits. Aim for three to five minutes. It’s better to make two or three short movies, each with a distinct approach, than to compile archival stills into longer pieces.
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CHAPTER 7: PROJECT IDEAS
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CASE STUDY: carolina
Step 1. Scan. Gather all the pictures you can get your hands on. Photo albums are obvious, but also look for 35mm slides, which can be scanned by a local or online service. Framed pho- tos can be slipped out of their frames for scanning. Before you begin to scan, look at all the photos and make a first selection of your favorite images. Use sticky notes to be sure you digitize the crème de la crème before your energy and time peter out. Scan at high resolution: 300 dpi is best.
Carolina Correa is from Caracas, Venezuela. She now lives and works in New York, where she has been a video editor and is completing an MA in Media Studies at the New School. Her precise and playful work as a designer appears throughout the pages of Mediapedia.
Growing up I always remember my mother with a camera. She took pictures of every important milestone of our lives, and not so important ones too. After years, this love for photography resulted in multiple volumes of photo albums. But wait! These are not small, portable nice- looking albums. My photo albums are from the 1970s and 1980s, which means they are big, heavy, and not very appealing to pull out, show, and share. Also, after some twenty years, some of the pictures have lost their color, and for some reason all the pictures have changed to a charming color of orange. Don’t get me wrong, I like the color orange . . . but suddenly all my memories are unicolor.
Step 2. Repair. Old photos discolor with age and are easily scratched and marred in the photo albums that have held them for years. Again, focus on the pictures that mean the most to you as you begin to repair those that need it the most. Start with color correction and brightness. If you are working in Photoshop, play around with the Sharpen filters. Consider whether some shots can be improved by defocusing backgrounds or editing out distracting elements and filling with the Clone tool. Save the source file first and then the one you’ve fixed up.
Many of the photos in Carolina’s album became discolored with age (top). These were carefully color corrected (immediately above). A photo of Carolina’s mother and aunt, as girls, had been badly damaged with a rip and spillage. Carolina used an application called Paint.net to make the fixes you see (left and bottom right.)
REQUIREMENTS
time: Each picture can take between five and ten min- utes to scan—longer to retouch and color correct. After the pictures are scanned and adjusted, making a slide show and/or video can take about half a day.
Why so short? Well first of all, you should be aware that three minutes is a long stretch for time-based media. The infomercials you see on late-night TV are often three minutes long, and they feel repetitive and endless. Second is the issue