Need to Get My Photos Digitized

Surely Wish I Could Find Those Old Pictures

By Jeff Salter

This week we’re talking about pictures – i.e., photos – and it pains me that so few of my special pix are on a computer. Or, to put it more precisely: most of the significant photos in my life were taken in REGULAR cameras which used ordinary FILM, from which PRINTS were made. Often there was only one print and who knows where that one ended up. And, most of you youngsters won’t comprehend this, but you can’t tell very much from examining a teeny-tiny NEGATIVE.

Oh well.

My whole point is that I remember several photos taken of me and one or both of my siblings. One of my favorites is a B&W snapshot of my brother and me in our Davy Crockett coonskin caps when I was in kindergarten. In the parking lot of Vineville Baptist Church in Macon GA (where our dad was associate pastor), we’re shirtless… and my youthful belly is hanging out just about like it does these days. Ha.

Another is of me and big brother and little sister in Juarez, Mexico… on a life size black wooden horse — we’re lined up, oldest in the rear and me in the middle, as usual.

Another is of all three of us during that brief sliver of time (probably one season) when Charles was in Boy Scouts, I was in Cub Scouts, and Becky was in Brownies. In this photo, taken by Ogden Studios in Covington LA (and later colorized by the studio artist who was also our sometime baby-sitter), we’re all in our uniforms. [Yes, children, in the olden days, many photos were shot in B&W and the coloring was added later… by an artist… with a brush.]

Wish I could show you those pix. But I don’t know where they are… and even if I could locate them, it would be a pain to copy / convert them with any fidelity.

Charles, Becky, and me at my niece’s wedding in VA in 1999. Yes, I know I’m not smiling — whenever I smile for photos, it always looks like I just swallowed a dead worm. Or, the photographer waits until I’m finished smiling before they finally snap the pix. In this instance, it was probably a worm. LOL By the way, I’m the same height as my brother, so evidently we were on a slight incline.

But one photo I did manage to copy / convert – just today, in fact, courtesy of my wife’s phone camera and email transmission – was a relatively rare shot [above] of me and both siblings… all dressed up. This was summer of 1999, in Norfolk VA where my sweet niece, Stephanie Rod Morgan, was getting married. The bride’s mother was my sister, Becky Rod — and doesn’t she look gorgeous?

The three of us have at times been referred to as Triple-S Productions… named after the movie company we formed as kids when we filmed our first cinematographic masterpiece in 8mm color. Years later, with a better camera (Super-8mm) and a cast that included my fiancé Denise Williams (among many friends), we filmed another, better movie. Our film career later culminated with our third production… and by that time Denise and I may have already been married (can’t recall for certain).

Well, anyway, I have many fond memories of growing up between an older brother and younger sister. Someone probably has a photo album somewhere with a few of those old snapshots which serve to chronicle our childhood — beginning (for me) in Starkville MS, then Chicago IL, then Macon GA, but mainly in Covington LA (with a one-year hiatus in Mt. Pleasant IA).

Here’s a pix taken roughly one year ago, here in Somerset… 17 years after the 1999 wedding photo. I don’t think we’ve changed a bit… do you?

Becky, Charles, and me in Somerset KY (May 2016). This was one of those pix where I’ve already tried smiling, but the photographer wouldn’t snap the picture… so I’m in the process of asking, “Did you take it yet?”

Question:

Do YOU have any particular photo which stands out to you? Are you in it… or is it a picture of someone/something else?

[JLS # 341]

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