Love the Black and Whites. Not sure just why they always seem more "real" than colors. Doesn't make sense. Great stuff, Ryan.
how does film get forgotten? man I couldn't wait to get my film processed back in the day and I almost always paid up for 1 hr turn around....
It’s funny, in some ways I love this digital age, (when it comes to photography at least) you can instantly see if a photo is bad and delete it. However, there is no longer the anticipation and then the excitement of seeing what you had captured. Back in the film era I always discovered a car, an event at a show or a person I had forgotten I had photographed.
In the 50 ,early 60s,I didn't have a camera,my Mom did "Brownie Box "for a long time,an later nearing the 60s she got a Polaroid* and a few of the little cardboard box things. One thing remained the same,she never got the flim devaliped tell all on roll had been taken.=Some times,that was more then a year,making the dates showing on the pics wrong by as much as a year+newer then the pic. Today every one has a carmera in the phone,with little to no understanding why there are not a lot more photos from the passed,other then lost or burned.. I feel lucky,I have save the few I have,and sad about likely lost over %50 of what there was. But really thanks Mom.
I didn’t realize how bad of a photographer I really was/am. I started digging through old pics the other day….man, the 80’s were blurry.
Now would be a good time to mention that digital archives are not as permanent as we might expect. This deep into the 21st century we probably have all suffered a hard drive loss at some point. The computer adage two is one, one is none, still applies. This is your reminder to go get another external hard drive or do a backup to the cloud, if that's your thing. I need to do it and I know I'm not alone. EDIT: I got a bunch of likes already, but want to add for those of us that have been around a while. I trust any 3rd party storing my stuff as far as they can fly. How many here had a ton of stuff stored forever for free on photobucket? Also, sharing is caring. Send those old shots to your buddies, it will provide a chance to reminisce and they will have a copy.
so keeping them all on 4 or 5 hard drives, stored at a couple different locations, might be the way to go? That's what I do. And I transfer them to new hard drives every several years
Theres a prob 5 year run of cars i owned in the early to mid 2000's that only now exist in my memories, while i did take digital, no pictures now exist due to hard drive crash. never printed them out, didnt have social media at the time, and for what ever reason i didnt save on photobucket.
yes... Hello, Hard drives have been around for quite some time. The early ones had spinning discs. They are history now. So, those could have had bad juju or an error in build or moving parts. Yes, they could have crashed. We have been doing computers since they first started with floppy discs and storage. Now, that was funny. Not a lot of safety in those days with a paper sleeve as protection. Today's solid state drives are almost fool proof. We have so many over the years and crashing is not a problem. The estimation of how much is the problem. How much or how large should one have to store things? We were all told that get the largest available, but those could crash and for some, they did. We were lucky, we never had any drives crash or freeze. But, spinning discs always had stuff that could go wrong. The only reason I have different ones since they came out is the thought that no one is going to fill up a 50 gigabyte hard drive. Ha! Now, our solid state hard drives are 5 TB and no way is it even close to transfers and capacity. We have three for safety. Two in an emergency "go bag," and one in our safe deposit box. They all get up dated every couple of months. It is as simple as connecting an USB plug and transfer. The speeds of the latest versions are incredible. I tried "select all" one day and whoosh, all photos/stories saved on my laptop were transferred to one solid state hard drive. Then, within a few minutes, the other two hard drives also had the updated stories and photos transferred. A shorter time than drinking two glasses of cold water on a hot day... ha! Jnaki Now, that is nothing. Most Apple phones saved items go directly to the Apple Cloud. So, you have saved your phone contributions. Good luck in getting access to find what you want... But, most big name corporations, Google, etc have cloud services, too. So, it is your choice. YRMV Since all of our important papers are now digitized, they are all on the two solid state hard drives we have direct access to daily or weekly. To each his own. And... those new solid state hard drives are smaller than an expensive pack of cigarettes. Why have a flathead underpowered motor when you can have a 383 c.i. crate motor sitting in your hot rod?
I'm curious - @Ryan can you name the cast of characters in some of those photos? (besides yourself, of course!)
I feel like this is related. Has to do with the power of forgotten photos. @Ryan I dunno if you remember my wedding. My mom had run around and put these cheap disposable cameras at every table. At the time I thought it was dumb... no one would use em and we all had phones at that point. Fast forward to last year. I lost my mom kind of suddenly. It sucked. In the fog of the next few months, my stepfather is cleaning through boxes and found a bag with all those cameras. They're 14 years old. Probably ruined. I took one down to walgreens to have it developed. Only one pic came out. A little hazy, but I'm in my tux with my arms wrapped around my mom. She hated getting her pic taken and almost never did so I have almost none of her and I as an adult. But I got this one. It's the most powerful photo in my life. I'm getting the rest done, hopefully some folks snapped some hot rod pics!
Ah, yes. The dawn of the internet, and I had just discovered the Jalopy Journal and dreamt of hitting one of the big shows with my first custom Edsel attempt. Isn't it wild to think how long ago the '90's are!
Dude. A shot one of those cameras. Like the whole roll… and Marcie got all pissed at me thinking it was inconsiderate! I wanna see my pics!
Rob Fortier in the roadster. The group standing around the car… Rudy(great guy) is one of them, but I can’t remember the rest. Think they were all shifters though…
Grand miracles? That’s for the dreamers, the fairy tale junkies, and those that lean towards tribalism. But here? We deal in reality, man—the gritty here and now, with all its jagged edges. What’s possible, what’s tangible, what we can hold in our hands. And let me tell you, eight photos—after 25 years? Hell, I’ll take it. Could’ve been worse. But seriously though… the kick to the gut when all that effort—hours of digging and dusting in the dark—only coughs up eight damn photos? Bummed doesn't even cover it. Thankfully… or regrettably…. I have a whole library to sort though and this exercise can only produce more.
As a teenager, and later college kid, back then I looked up to all those guys because what they were doing seemed cool and (more importantly) it suddenly seemed attainable. All the old guys who were mentoring me back then were into crazy expensive cars with north star v8s… Cars that always didn’t look and feel right to me for some then indiscernible reason. But a high school friend both bought a model a roadster with a flathead (for $8k) and more importantly, gave me a copy of Vern and Mike Bishop’s book. Everything changed and the jalopy journal and all traditional hot rod and custom content became a daily reading necessity. So thanks to folks like Ryan, Axle & the shifters, Weesner & Burbank Choppers, shows like Paso and Ventura and especially Jay for Billetproof for getting the ball rolling and inspiring the rest of us. And no thanks to everyone who came after and jacked all the prices sky high.
Squeak Bell ( One of the founder's of the Shifters ) at T.R.O.G. at FLABOB a couple of years ago. Credit to the original photographer that shot it. Thanks from Dennis.
The Jalopy Journal
