1,800th Image

"Malcolm, Farnum, and Gilbreth - Walnut Lake, May 1920"
Where is this Walnut Lake? Assuming that these are last names, what are their first names? 
And which are which?  
BTW, this is not the 1,800th hundred image.  Just an example of what I have to work with sometimes.

There is an old saying that everyone dies twice.  Once when the body and soul cease to exist, and the second time, the last time your name is uttered aloud. 

Cookie believes that in the last 170 years or that photography has been a part of people's lives, there are also a third, and a fourth death.  

The third is when the person's gravesite is lost. 

And the fourth, when there is no longer an image of that person or their markers. 

Today, at noon, Cookie uploaded his 1,800th image to Find A Grave.  Of that, about 300 are tombstones and grave markers. 

And 1,500 are pictures of the deceased person.

I write this, Not to brag, but to observe.   It's that whole "fourth type of death" that cookie wants to undo.

So that has meant spending years, pouring over pictures, comparing photographs, ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, then scanning, cropping, correcting, restoring, and uploading.  And when I couldn't find a memorial, searching records & census forms, looking at others family trees*, searching old books, registrations, and walking graveyards, then creating the memorials once they have been proven. Then I create the memorials for the descendants and upload that picture, or pictures, of people like you and me, people who never thought about fading from memory. 

Not all of the pictures are what I would call "winning" images.  Many were taken 100+ years ago using crude Kodak box and Brownie cameras, the film for which is horrible at the contrast.  Or they were taken with the color film other than Kodachrome, which presents its own horror as the dyes have long been broken down so that everything is PINK.

And to fix these, I have been teaching myself Photoshop CC.  No easy task because I was taught to use lighter-duty programs.  After two years I consider myself a beginner.   I still have a long, long way to grow. 

I should add that I have never once used an AI program to autocorrect an image, or worse, color it.  

For example, I just finished a photo album belonging to a long-gone cousin who made friends everywhere she went.  100 pages, 500 images of people, places, and events.  Only about 75 people be ID's right off the bat and found online.  Another 100+ had to be fully researched, traced, and their memorials created.   I still have approximately 175-200 people for which I only have first, or last names, like SMITH, TOUEY, McBRIDE, or SUSAN, AMELIA, JIM.  Some have nicknames like SPOTS, WINKIE, SIS, and something called the "The FARQUARTET" whatever that is.  The frustrating ones are the ones like this:  "My relative Suze" and "Liz's ex-husband, SPATS."

Not enough people named DUCKY, UNC, and SPATS.  Where oh where are you, SPATS?

I have a lovely photo of "Dickie in his new Nash" dated "September last".  Is it 1919, 1920, or 1921? 

DAMN IT, these people have names!  Help me, Jesus.  Seriously.  Enlighten me.

And so when I finish this post, I will dive back in, trying to jog something in my head between an early seen image and a later one.

My other push to do this is that while we live in a world of photography, the pictures are surviving as we think they are.  Polaroids are darkening, color snapshots are yellowing, their blacks fading, and CDV and Cabinet card images are slowly fading away for a variety of reasons.  So time is not our friend, my friends.

Mark those pictures, people.  Having something is better than nothing!

So I will do this until I can no longer do this. I will keep at this task.  

No one deserves to be forgotten.  And Cookie is doing his damnedest to make sure that I get through as many of these before the day comes when someone has to make a memorial for me.