Summer List- Projects Three and Four cont.

Project number three was/is to make a family movie of the Hatch family slides. Most of these slides are from the 1960s. I pulled out Doug's family slides from under my armoire. We have two boxes much like the size of a shirt box. Each box holds 15 or 16 smaller clear plastic cubes that have 38 to 40 individual slides. We then have a gallon zip lock bag with an assortment of slide containers. Forever ago we were going to organize the slides and send them off to be transferred to VHS tape for the Hatch family. Once Doug organized them and began to think about music selections we then were concerned about sending them off in case they got lost or damaged. We didn't know with whom to trust these irreplaceable items.

One of our colleagues at our former university was a videographer and had the technology to convert the slides and make the tape. Unfortunately he and we were always too busy to sit down and connect in order learn how to use his equipment. Finally with the ever evolving technology, I was able to obtain a scanner that scan slides as jpeg images and a computer program that makes movies using video and still photos. I've made to movies using still photos, so I've begun to get some experience with the I-Movie program.

In order to make the movie I need to scan the slides. When I was at my best and on a roll with this project I was able to scan two cubes per day 76-80 images per day. From past experiences I decided to burn the images to a CD at the completion of 10 cubes. This way all my work would not be lost if my computer crashed. Right now today I have completed cube 22.

Doug in looking at the photos noticed that some of them are backwards. I used a very specific method for scanning the slides so I am guessing that when the slides were made they weren't always made in a systematic way. Just like with photo development, over the years the slide frames changed. Some frames are cardboard with a logo on one side others are plastic with a embossed direction (this side toward screen), and some with nothing on them. Doug realizing that some were backward despite my care with them was disconcerting. Now I will need Doug to view all the pictures and take notes on which are backwards. I'll have to find those slides and rescan them before I can begin to work on the movie.

This obviously is not going to be completed by the end of summer as I had hoped in May. I am also toying with the idea of adding photos from more recent years in WA with the family to the movie. We'll see. The story has yet to fully evolve in my mind. I hope that it will be finished by Christmas. Working on this project continued to bring Doug's unfinished album to my mind. I often thought oh that would have been a good picture for his album. Also his unfinished album was still sitting at the end of the dining table as a constant reminder of unfinished business.

I think that I came to a stand still on Doug's album because I had now gotten to the part of the album where Amber had damaged photos and knew it would be hunt and additional process to find negatives of those pictures so that they could be replaced. Even though I have a good organized system of our photos it's not perfect. Boy is it not perfect. This week I found a photo that I spent a day hunting for and gave up looking for it. This week it was sitting right in the front of the box from the year 2000. Too later now, the album is finished.

I also rearranged some pages and added some new elements to the album, like colleagues from the two universities where Doug worked, the Sports Illustrated article that mentioned him, newspaper articles, a couple of work related honors and our Bulls NCCA tournament bid. I found it interesting how my perspective changed in relation to the album at this time in my life. There were some pages that I didn't change a bit and others where all types of things changed and there was the need to add to the story of Doug's life. Thirteen years ago I certainly looked at the album differently. I think that this must be somewhat like what writers must experience as look back on their work. I can make this better or this isn't important or I left this important aspect out of my story.

Anyway on Monday, July 7th, I completely finished the album and presented it to Doug. I felt compelled to add two pages (four sides) that contained a glimpse into the future as this album was to only represent Doug's 40 years of life. I added his doctoral graduation, the birth of his daughter, our move here, and an updated look at our family. Oh how we've grown in just the last thirteen years with marriages and babies.

So in summary project three is not finished. It came to a screeching halt as the boys finished summer school and began to monopolize the computer. It is one of those projects that I will flitter back to once school begins. Project four is finished. It has a spurred me on to make a Christmas album. As I cleaned up after the completion of the birthday album, I began pulling photos of all our Christmases from our first in WA (December 1987) to this past Christmas of 2008.