Revelle Jackson Collection Indexes

Mr Jackson had kindly donated a large number of negatives from his professional career to the Upper Hutt Public Library.  I took on the task of scanning these negatives without the slighest trepidation (what a greenhorn!) and was given the first of three boxes containing a significant number of envelopes per box . An envelope might contain only 1 or 2 negatives or it might hold over 100. In the beginning I literally scanned every negative inside an envelope but, negatives needing to be scanned at a much higher resolution than a normal photo, I seemed to be making no headway at all.

If anything it looked like there were more envelopes in the box than when I'd first started. The Archivist at the Library had advised me to be selective from the getgo or I'd never be finished and I eventually had to admit she was right and I was a muppet. For particular envelopes I thought it best to still scan everything (Xmas Parties) but for the remainder of the 3 boxes I eventually scanned  I settled for selections from each envelope. I did look at every negative while making this selection though. All names/keywords were taken from the handwriting on the respective envelopes, it is possible I misread some slightly and have poorly spelled certain names, no offence intended.

At a rough guess I scanned around 7000-8000 negatives then culled many that I felt weren't needed to tell the `story' of an occasion/event. No need to be horrified by that cavalier statement, Mr Jackson (now a sprightly 90) told me he hadn't seen some of the photos I showed him because he'd never developed all his negatives.  That was a pretty cool moment actually, I got a real kick out of showing him his own handiwork and because the negatives were mainly in very good condition the large scans looked beautiful on the laptop.

It is Mr Jackson's hope the subjects of his photographs and/or their friends and descendants discover these photographs still exist and that copies can be sourced from the Upper Hutt Public Library. After discussion with the Library I was given consent to create and host indexes of the scans so that people might discover the possibility of replacing lost or destroyed memories.

The indexes had to be as wide as they are, any narrower and I might as well have not created them because you'd have to squint as much as I did while looking at the original negative. With that in mind, make sure your browser is not automatically resizing these images smaller than they are meant to be viewed.

If any amateur/professional photographer would like me to do something similar for them, please get in touch and we'll see if we can strike a deal that doesn't involve money changing hands.  Something along the lines of... I scan your images and give you back a cd/dvd of printable digital copies with your originals, I host any interesting historical images at a large but non-printable size, consent sought first.

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Mark
30/03/09