film preservation: the 1960s home

Photo preservation is so cool. 

Who doesn't have a box of film slides that has been sitting on the top shelf of a closet for years and years? That dusty container holds precious memories that have been all but forgotten. Many of the people in the images have been gone for at least a generation. Homes, furnishings, cars and gardens look different. Colors and styles have changed. 

By preserving these images, we bring the past back to life. Perhaps we realize that so much of what is gone has come back in style again. Perhaps we see something that inspires us. We reconnect with family and friends we haven't seen for decades. For the first time, we "meet" grandparents and great-grandparents who gave us our appearances and personalities. We discover our love for 1960s Cadillacs or mid-century furniture. We decide to work on our posture. We shop for classic clothes that we hope will still look good forty years from now. We turn off the TV and put down our iPhones. We live for today.

Film slides won't last forever. Even if they have been stored in their original boxes in a climate-controlled space, they are very susceptible to fading, dirt and scratches. As someone who considers these images to be priceless, I recommend preserving digital and print versions of every image. From there, make multiple copies, share with family and friends and store at least one copy of the digital files in a fireproof safe.  

Last summer, I started preserving our family slides and discovered I had a passion for the process. Gerald & Joan now offers film preservation as one of our service lines, and we'd love to help you preserve your family's images. More importantly, we want to encourage you to get those boxes out of the closet. The memories are much too special to lose forever. 

Vintage Palos Verdes, California

For the past year, Palos Verdes, California (and the South Bay area in general) has been recurring theme on this blog (the most recent post was this one). PV was my family's home from 1960 to 1973. When my great-grandmother Elsie passed away in 1973, she asked that the house be sold and that her ashes be spread over the Pacific Ocean near PV. Her three children respected those wishes. Both of her daughters remained in California, but neither one lived in Palos Verdes again. As a child, I don't remember visiting PV very much. I think the first trip we made up the peninsula was in 1994, but I remember that it had a huge impact on me. I wanted to visit PV during every vacation, but I think we only visited one or two other times before Joan's death in 2003. After our first California vacation together in 2005, Jonathan and I began spending more time in the South Bay area, and our day trips to PV became highlights. The combination of the natural beauty of the coastline and the pristine mid-century California homes captured our hearts. After scanning so many film slides over the past few months, it became clear to me that we are drawn there for other reasons as well. It is part of our history and our family's story.

La Venta Inn in Palos Verdes, California around 1960.

Palos Verdes, California circa 1960.

Elsie's home in Palos Verdes, circa 1960.

A view of the South Bay - Redondo, Hermosa and Manhattan Beaches -- from Palos Verdes, circa 1960.

Elsie at the beach, circa 1960.

Looking up the hill from Elsie's backyard, circa 1960.

Beautiful mid-century Palos Verdes homes, circa 1960.

A view of Elsie's backyard in Palos Verdes, taken around 1960.

Another view of the South Bay, taken around 1960.

Malaga Cove Plaza, circa 1960.

And just for fun...a recent shot of the same fountain!

Also in Malaga Cove Plaza was the Palos Verdes General Store, circa 1960.

Here's the same building in recent years.

A view of La Venta Inn, looking down over Elsie's house, circa 1960.

Me and Jonathan in that same spot on our first trip to PV together in 2005. Elsie's house is to our right with the skylight.

All of the above images from 1960 are from our family's film archives and were scanned and converted to digital images by Gerald and Joan. If you are interested in having us scan and preserve your family's film slides or images, contact us here. The recent images of California were taken by my mother.

Family Stories: Joan Fay Stroup

There are few people who have had more influence on my life than my grandmother Joan. She and I shared a middle name as well as a special bond from the day I was born. I arrived during an especially dark period in her life. Her husband and true love was dying of cancer at only 50 years old. When he passed away weeks before my first birthday, the gaping hole he left behind could not be filled, but she found joy in spending time with her only daughter and first granddaughter. I'm not sure if our bond was born from that devastating loss or if it came from something else. Ironically, she shared a similar connection with her grandmother Laura, and it is Laura's name that comes before Fay to make up my middle name. I like to think those names and the relationships that were attached to them served as a starting point for the role they would play in my life. Perhaps they are part of the reason I'm here today, focusing on a business that carries her name and sharing these images from her childhood. I'm in the progress of getting these printed and framed to hang on the family wall in our new house. I have so many pictures that I think we may have more than one family wall, but that's okay because I prefer family photographs to most other artwork anyway. They are so special to me.

Baby Joan in 1934

Joan with her beloved dog, Sandy.

Joan (on the right) with a friend.

Those curls...

Posing with her tennis racket.

With her brother Bob.

With Bob and her older sister Betty.

Baby Joan with Betty and Bob.

With Bob and her mother Elsie.

An adorable Joan (second from right) with her childhood friends.

Preserving Film Slides

As I've mentioned several times over the past few months, I inherited many boxes of vintage family film slides in September. Over the past month, I have been using my film scanner to scan, edit and preserve these slides. It has been a tedious process, but it is one that is well worth the time because so many of the images haven't been seen for 50 years. I was not yet born when my family lived in Palos Verdes, California. My family previously lived in Anchorage, Alaska (my grandparents and mother) and Green Mills, Ohio (my grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents). As I never spent time in either of those places but heard about them growing up, these images are like a time machine that has taken me back through history to meet the people I never had the opportunity to know and see the places I wasn't able to experience first-hand. It has been a truly incredible, almost out-of-body experience. After sharing this project with family, friends and neighbors, I have been surprised by how many of them have similar boxes of slides that are decaying in their closets and attics. The combination of their stories and my own have inspired me to offer film and photo scanning, editing and archiving as services of Gerald & Joan when our new website launches later this season. My own family's stories have become such an integral part of this blog that it only seems fitting that the preservation of other people's stories should be a part of Gerald & Joan as well.

Here are just a few of the people and places I've seen lately:

My great-grandmother's second husband, Kent W. Benham, at their home in Palos Verdes, California.

Joan, Julie and Elsie in Palos Verdes, California.

Elsie with her granddaughters, Cheri and Julie, in Green Mills, Ohio, several years before their move to California.

Elsie visiting Julie in Anchorage, Alaska.

Julie visiting her grandfather Clyde in Green Mills, Ohio shortly before his passing.