Photography, history, and genealogy are a few of mine, and they kind of overlap. My grandfather was a semi-professional photographer for years, working part time for a local studio, and he saved ALL of his negatives going back to the early 1940s. I'm in the process of digitizing them, but I can't afford a negative scanner (and most of the old ones are medium and large format, not 35mm) so I've had to develop my own method using a florescent light fixture, an opaque piece of white plastic to diffuse the light, my DSLRs, and an attachment for an old Polaroid (used for copying photos - it creates a good distance between my camera and the negative or slide I'm copying). Here are some pictures (from the original negatives) that he took in the 40s and 50s:
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My great aunt (his sister), Mary Ann in the mid-1950s.
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My mother, taken around 1966 or 67.
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The flooded corner of Herman St. and Glendora Ave. in the west end of Louisville, KY, 1945.
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And Capitol St. in Jackson, MS, probably around April, 1947. You old movie buffs can take note of the movie playing at the Paramount: "Stallion Road" starring Ronald Reagan and Alexis Smith.
Color negatives were more difficult to figure out and correct (especially reds), but I finally came up with the right settings in Camera Raw.
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Me in 1984.
Of course I take my own pictures as well, and do so for a living (well, somewhat anyway, I'm actually a partner in a video production company, so stills are only part of what I do). Here are a few of my favorite shots (well, ones I have handy to share):
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I took this in the spring of 2009. It is the ruins of the water treatment facility for the "Central Kentucky Lunitic Asylum," now known as Central State Hospital, in a part of Louisville called Anchorage. The asylum was built in the early 1870s, and, if I remember right, the water treatment constructions date to the 1880s or so. Most of the buildings from this part of the property (about 50 acres) were cleared, and the land given to the adjoining E. P. "Tom" Sawyer State Park a few years ago.
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I took this in fall, 2011 in downtown Louisville. This is part of an endangered block known as Whiskey Row. It is a nearly intact block of former distilleries/warehouses dating to the 1860s-70s. The four buildings on the far end have, or are being renovated. The five closest have been the subject of local controversy. A local developer, Todd Blue bought them, two others out of frame, and a vacant lot at the end of the block. His original plan was renovation and development, a project he called the "Iron Quarter" because of their cast iron facades. When the economy tanked, he just let the buildings go until he thought they were too far gone. Blue then decided they needed to be torn down. This started a heated battle between Blue, local preservationists, and the city. Ultimately a deal was reached where Blue sold the five buildings in the foreground to another developer with plans to save them. Several (including two kept by Blue) had to be gutted/essentially torn down, but their facades have been saved and will be incorporated into whatever redevelopment takes place on the site. The whole area has been experiencing a renewal in recent years thanks to the creation of Waterfront Park, about a block or so away on the river, and the KFC Yum Center (seen in the background), home of University of Louisville basketball and other major events.
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This last picture appeals to two of my photographic interests, churches, and derelict buildings. It is from the interior of what used to be Quinn Chapel AME Church near downtown Louisville. The building was built in the 1884 as the Weaver Memorial Baptist Church, and later Chestnut St. Baptist. In 1910, the congregation, which was white, sold to Quinn Chapel, a black congregation, who had been in existence since 1838. (An interesting aside, they first met in a room above a public stable at 2nd and Main Sts., the corner seen in the picture above.) Quinn Chapel was key in the civil rights movement in Louisville. When Martin Luther King Jr. came to Louisville, he would lead protests from here into downtown. The church moved in 2002, and sold the property to the YMCA. It has sat empty ever since, although there are supposedly plans to eventually turn it into a community center. It is one of the few historical buildings left in its area, with most of the rest falling victim to urban renewal in the 1950s-60s. The roof, which you can see was in VERY bad shape, with several large holes, has since been replaced.
-Eric