Collecting and scanning

 

I started to go through our photo drawer, looking for childhood pictures of me and my family when I was little, as I planned on basing my digital montage on family and memories. I found lots of pictures that I've seen a million times before but then I came across some REALLY old photos that I've never seen before, of my Dad in his teenage years and also some of my Mum in her teenage years and younger!! These were really interesting to me and gave me an idea of their life, way before me and my sister were born and even before they had met each other! After discovering these, I decided to base my digital montage on family and my Parents' memories.

 

There were also pictures of my Grandparents when they were around the age that my Mum and Dad are now. Both my Grandads passed away before I was born so it was really nice to see what they were like and how much my parents look like them! My Dad's dad looks the spitting image of what my Dad looks like now! I have seen the odd picture of them before but not this many.

 

My Nanna (Dad's Mum) was around until I was about 8. We only saw her about 3 times a year as she lived in Carlisle but I have SO many fond memories of her and her house which me and my sister used to love. We also used to write letters to her and she'd write back.

 

My Grandma (Mum's Mum) is still here and looking at old photos of her is strange as she was very glamorous and ladylike by the looks of things. Now she is a very cheeky and funny old lady.

 

I really love looking at old pictures. I love how retro they look as they were obviously taken with film.

 

So....I collected some of the photos together and also some old letters off my Nanna.

 

 

 

 

First of all I arranged some of my Dad's old pictures together and stuck them with blue tack onto some paper. 

 

Then I scanned them in at a resolution of 300dpi.

 

 

I repeated this again with my Mum's old photos.

 

 

 

I then started to think about what else could go into the montage and what could fill some of the gaps. I wanted to include some references to me and my sister in there too, as we link these 2 people together. I always remember my Mum calling us 'sweet peas' when we were little. She used to play the piano and my Aunty (Dad's sister) was a singer and they wrote a song about me and my sister years ago and called it 'sweet peas'. I decided to do a quick sketch of some sweet peas so I could use that somewhere in the montage.

 

 

I thought it would be nice to use a letter off my Nanna in the montage too so scanned one in.

 

 

I also scanned in some various other things like some film negatives and some old calligraphy that my Dad wrote when he was a teenager which my Nanna had framed up on her wall until she passed away. As this was still in the frame, it was hard to scan and came out blurry so I used my DSLR to take a picture of it instead.