Dear Photographs at Mom’s House

The ds106 assignment for what comes below is “Return to the Scene of the Crime”:

Take a photo from the past that you took in a particular location. Return to that stop, and take another picture, “framing” the original within the current view.

The whole premise is to find an old photo, return to the location, and create a new one where you are holding the photo and lining it up with the scene. It is a nifty mixing of analog in the digital space.

I’d done some toying with this same technique after discovering the flickr Look into the Past grpup, which does overlays of historic photos over current scenes- I had done a few around my home town of Strawberry and neighboring Pine, AZ.

First of all, a wide angle lens is essential. It need not be a DSLR, but you need a wide angle to fit the whole photo in. I used my Canon 10-20mm zoon.

But there is a whole lot more, as Giulia led me to in her iteration of the assignment, connecintg to the Dear Photograph site. The extra level here is doing the story part, of writing a memory of the photo as if you were talking to it.

While at Mom’s house doing the cleanup, I came across a number of photos of Mom, Dad, and even me around this house. So off I went…

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Dear Photograph,

Could Dad have been much happier relaxing in his easy chair, having retired to Florida in 1990- afte dreaming of it for many years? But you left this world in 2001, and your chair was moved out of the photo. Mom got a new one… and now that one too shall disappear.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Dear Photograph,

Was I really that skinny, young, and punk faced in the 1990s? Did I really sport a mullet? As my first visit to the place Mom and Dad retired to, it took some getting used to as they had left the house I had grown up in since the age of 2. This new place was… so nice, so new… so Florida. But they sure loved it and thats what counts the most.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Dear Photograph,

A thing I share with both Mom and Dad is the joy of working in my yard. And this place in Fort Myers they sure made their own. I am pretty sure my Mom spotted some orchids at some other place, and she lifted a few to grow in the tree behind her. This would have been? 1997, so their Florida place had long been made their home.

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog

Dear Photograph,

I was a bit incredulous that my parents would slice the top off of a store bought pineapple, soak it a few days in a wate dish, and later plant it in the back yard of their place in Fort Myers. My disbelief was disbanded the day I tried the sweet pleasure of a fresh pineapple!

Sometime later, strangers cam by and stole some of the pineapples, so I was pleasantly surprised to find one with a nice fruit hanging on it!

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog