If you are a Flickr contact of mine, you might know that I have lately been scanning some photos (just a few, all told) from my photo albums. This has been, and is, odd for various reasons.
While the photo albums are “in order” (chronological), they aren’t perfect. For one thing, I’d often remove a partially shot roll of film to put another speed in, if needed, and switch back to the partially shot one later. There is also very little recorded data with the photos. This was my life. I should know more about it.
A fair amount of metadata exists. Somewhere. Somewhere, possibly multiple places, are some small notebooks with details about scores of rolls of film recorded. Where are they? What are the limits of that data? What is its quality? How variable is it? These are all highly interesting questions for one such as me.
So far, I have been dropping the new scans in the Assorted Scans set and then arranging the new photos in chronological order. They need arranging because the set was initially populated with a few scans that I already had or photos at hand prior to bringing the photo albums back from storage in Normal. The wedding photos had to fit in fairly quickly and the “original” scans covered almost a 25-year period. All new photos, when uploaded, go to the end of the set, too, which is probably not where they belong. For a long time still. Thus. Arranging.
Most photos have little real metadata. I find that somewhat disheartening. Even more disheartening, this was my life. I recognize it from behind the lens of my camera. [One should read Jacques Ellul on this: The Humiliation of the Word, chap. III, "Sight Triumphant," Photographs subsection in Section 1. The Invasion of Images (pp.121-24).] I can only plead youth and ignorance.
While I may not have specific dates, or place names, or something else, I do have stories about all of them, and of the many, many more that are left out. Honestly, the few I have been scanning don’t even add up to the outline of a story. Although stories are too wordy for Flickr, I need to find a way to tell some of them. For now, I’ll leave some of it up to prompting by others. In fact, I owe Miss E the story of why Jeremy had an “infamous nose blanket.” And I find it odd that I don’t seem to have a photo of the nose blanket in action, as it were. Maybe it was such a normal part of our odd little lives that it wasn’t worth photographing; although, it did make a great live demonstration. Little kids as “freaks” and all. 
At this point, I am up to the beginning of the 4th photo album and Sara’s arrival in the world (early Nov. 1983). These photo albums are of photos taken with my Canon AE-1 that I got in 1979. I actually have 2 albums of Polaroids from Basic and Advanced Individual Training (AIT), my leave before I headed for Germany the 1st time, and early barracks life on a nuclear missile site in West Germany. These are a preservation issue at the moment. They need some intervention before I can scan any of them. Getting them out of the albums will be the first step. These come before those in the numbered albums; chronologically-speaking.
It appears that I have just found my notebook that covers April 1985 to April 1995. I am not yet to that point in time in my scanning, but this is great news. Now where is the earlier one(s)? I also found a notebook from some time in 2003 that covers the last 8 or so rolls shot after I had my camera cleaned and refurbed, but I have no idea were any of the loose rolls of film are.
Well, I used a few tricks of the professional, individual, info manager/seeker and found the box with all the rolls of slides and most of the “loose” rolls of film, including up to the last ones I shot. It may not be everything, but it is probably most of the non-albumed photos.
Just who is going to do this, and just when is this going to be done?
I sure wish I could put a little of what I’m feeling by revisiting all of these photos into the scans so you could feel it, too. Might just help tell many of the stories. And I wish I could do better with the “facts” without having to rely on recorded “knowledge.”
It is only (representations of) my life. And of the stories that comprise it.