My last year

Ever since my dad passed away in 2009, I've become fascinated with genealogy. After the funeral, I took his photo album and started to scan all his old photos so that I could share his collection with the rest of the family. I looked at his album and figured I could scan them within a few months.

However, after telling my aunt Karina my idea, she allowed me to add her bags of photos to the mix and told me to scan them all, and so began a year-long project that has been therapeutic and interesting at the same time.

This group shot in the garden was taken around 1918 and holds the faces of people I am related to but never got the chance to meet. My grandmother sits in the front row in a white sweater, looking young and pretty, while my great-grandfather and great-grandmother also pose in the photograph.

After my dad's photos were done, my step-dad asked to have his photos scanned and re-touched so that he too could share his photos with his friends and family. This picture of him in 1936 is a good example of what you are up against when you scan a 70-year-old photo. Time has made the photo yellow, and scratches and other bits of dust and dirt appear on the scan in great detail.

So... Photoshop to the rescue! First I cropped the photo, adjusted the angle, color corrected the photo, de-saturated the image, and then zoomed into the photo to about 400% and removed all the dust and scratches with the clone tool.

Each photo took me around 30 mins to clean up. If I was lucky, I could be in and out in 5 mins if there wasn't much dust, or if it was a big crowd shot where dust marks weren't noticeable. Each day I would try to find time to do about seven photos. Slowly, I got through them all.

In the end, I discovered great photos such as this one of my uncle Andrew in 1964 in Italy. He was 26 in this photo which blows my mind that my uncle was younger than I am now! I look at this photo with the great outfit, the shoes, the coca-cola boxes, and I can't wait to talk to him about this time in his life. I wish I had had this photo with me when I was in England in November!

The strangest bit of doing this project has been seeing the family resemblance in all the photos. My dad is seen here sitting front row centre. In 1996, my nephew Damir was born and when I saw this photo I couldn't believe how much they look alike. I can't wait to start my genealogy search and to trace back as far as I can the lines of my family tree.