Vintage Family Photos #3 - the Allen Family

So, tonight at midnight is the deadline for entering the engagement session giveaway contest! I forget, every time I run a contests, how terribly hard it is to choose a winner. Who am I to pick one idea out of so many rad ones?! I'm not totally sure I'm going to decide, and I am so grateful to everyone that sent me such fantastic ideas. In any case, I have the weekend to choose the idea I most want to photograph, and I will be emailing everyone on Monday (though you won't know who won until we shoot the photos and get them up on the blog!).

Anyway, to help us all with the suspense of the big decision, I figured it was time for another installment of "Vintage Family Photos". This one, of my mother's family, the Allens!



I find many things interesting about these first few photos. Both of my grandfathers were great amateur hobbyist photographer. On my mother's side, my grandpa "Howdy" (short for Howard, as in Charles Howard Allen - mom, why did so many Allens end up going by their middle names?), was a realtor, a painter, a sculptor, a hunter, and an avid photographer, too. I have many rolls of photos that he shot between the 1940s and 70s... from photos of his family, of duck hunts, of the Bohemian Grove, and of manly things like airplanes and cars. These are some of my very favorite of his shots though: his four children, dressed up for, presumably, a Christmas card shoot.



You can see the bossiness of his posing (the whole "look admiringly up at your older brothers" thing isn't exactly the most natural pose in the world!), and the strictness of 1950s matching outfits for the little girls; but I also see some lovely composition both indoors and out. By all accounts, this was not a super sturdy man working with the most advanced of camera gear (my mom does a great impression of him kind of bobbing around and fidgeting with his old Brownie camera), but I think he got great results! Just another example of how it's not the gear, it's what you do with the gear.

On a more superficial note, I like seeing my mom and aunt and uncles way back in the olden days. I like laughing at how ridiculously tan Peter is; how young uncle Wheat (yes, Wheatley) is; how cute mom and Susie are, even (or especially?) matching. I like seeing the happy hunting dog (what breed is that?) that was one the precursors for the Jenny-doggie that I knew in the 1980s. I love how the black and white film and the square format creates such a unique, vintage feel for the images. I like thinking that I got my photographic interest from the grandfathers I knew but wish I could've known better.



And, best of all - I LOVE the adorable, Stinson Beach-inspired outfits of this mid-1960s image! :)


Happy weekend!

Vintage Family Photos #2 - My College Graduation (and really awful haircut)

I have to say, I wasn't planning on sharing so very many photos of myself lately, but I think this one will make you laugh, and is a great segue to my next post (coming up very soon). My friend Megan had me photograph her dramatically short haircut (you'll see!), and I had just been going through the family photos when I found these, so of course I had to bring them along to make her feel better.

"See, Megan? No matter what happens, you will never have this terrible of a haircut!"



Okay, in truth, I love these photos, because they take me back to a specific place (Bennington College, Southwest Vermont - see the Green Mountains in the background?), a specific time (graduation, June 2000), and a specific mix of feelings (most of which I am SO grateful I don't feel any more! confusion, anxiety, etc...) that now seem so far away. How on earth has it been almost NINE years since I graduated from college?! That is a scary thought.



Back to the photos. And the haircut. I've never been scared of looking a little "bohemian" (shall we say), with sort of gentle-scary alterations like piercings, small tattoos, wacky clothing, etc. Though my friends in high school tended to be much freakier-looking and punk rock than myself, I still shopped at a lot of thrift stores and hesitantly considered myself kinda "alternative" (remember the 90s?!). But I never really changed, cut, or dyed my hair drastically. Temporary Manic Panic, yes, but always a shade of red-orange-magenta over my regular red hair. I still tell myself (and my hairdresser!) that I will leave it as it is until it goes white. Maybe then I'll be the little old lady with crazy green, purple, or black hair.

Anyway, after a lifetime of normal hair (okay, there were those BANGS, and that one feathered 'do in 1987, but those weren't crazy on purpose), in the final months of the last semester of college, I decided it was now or never. I cut off all of my hair (from about shoulder length). I did a terrible, terrible job, and I just hacked it all off near the crown of my head. I gave myself a mullet for about 5 minutes, gawking in the mirror, and then just kept going.



I was sort of hoping that I would reveal myself as one of those women with beautiful, dramatic features and look amazing with a buzz cut. But, alas, that wasn't the case, and I didn't even have the right product to attempt to tame it... You could every cowlick I have, and there are lots of those! So it was a long, painful growing out process. Though I have some cool extra-orange color splotches that occur naturally, and it was kind of neat to see that leopard-y effect, it just wasn't worth the years of headbands, pomade, and spikiness. Have I mentioned that I have really, really curly and thick hair?!

Still, I'm glad I did it once! And I'm so glad to have my long red hair back! Megan's hair will grow again : ) and in the meantime her little pixie cut looks so adorable, it makes me wish I was brave enough to go for a cute little cut just like it. However, I seem to have scared myself out of that for good!

Vintage Family Photos #1

I guess because of my chosen career, in the past decade, there has been a gradual shift in my family, where I have become the keeper of the family's archive of old negatives and miscellaneous photo prints. My parents still have most of the photo albums they made throughout the years, though I have a couple of my baby albums here now, but the doubles, the negatives, and the very random have ended up with me. We're talking about photos from at least the 1930s on, and with two hobbyist grandfathers, that's a lot of imagery!

I'm still working on the best way to store them - I haven't even begun to think about actually sorting or labeling them - but in the meantime, I'm excited to debut my new occasional blog post, "Vintage Family Photos". The idea behind scanning in some chosen shots each week and posting them to the blog is that it will not only encourage me to look through these and enjoy them, as well as share them with family and friends, but it will hopefully also reinforce the importance of photos to everyone's families, whether blurry, faded snapshots or professional prints. I'm hoping some fun topics will come up sort of organically, too - maybe some of my grandmother's photos from the 30s and 40s will inspire thought about identical twins (she was one), or old black and white film processes?

So, here goes.

The first star of the show is my baby brother, Austin!



(above photo: Austin's official preschool photo - love the fire chief touch! - photographer unknown, You and Me Preschool)

Isn't he adorable? So, okay, maybe he's not a baby anymore... he's 25 and lives in New York City, and is a fantastic jazz drummer.

Here we are welcoming him home. I love this photo - it's my grandmother, me, and brand new Austin. My mom told us that my older sister and I that were going to have a brother or sister on my birthday (August 1st, 1982?), and I remember looking up from the Raggedy Anne board game I had just received (love that Camel With The Wrinkly Knees!) and said, "I want a brother baby." So I guess I was pretty thrilled to meet him - don't I look it?



Please also note the fresh early 80's clothes on everyone!

Babies do cry a lot, but I don't remember complaining.



(We had that satiny, green comforter for years - it finally fell apart after I took it in my junior year of college.)



Don't you love how happy my mom looks? Nice haircut, mom.

Finally, a jump ahead 15 years or so - I have no idea what is going on in this Polaroid, but I think there was a lot of fake blood involved.



Teenage boys are very different from baby brothers.

Happy weekend!!