Old Family Photo Collection

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Overview

This site contains photo galleries related to the families of George Avila, Juanita Avila (neé Weston), Dan O'Connor, and Evelyn O'Connor (neé Clocksin). In the interest of individuals' privacy, the pictures are mostly pre-1950. Please contact me if you have any questions, corrections, or suggestions for improvements. I've tried my best to identify the people but a lot of this has been based on educated guesses.

The same content on the galleries will be available in an offline medium such as a thumb drive.

Technical Info

The photos are captured by either:

  1. Scanning on a flatbed scanner (A Brother MFC497J All-in-one, at 300 dots per inch)
  2. Photographing prints using a camera (most likely a Canon 70D) on a tripod
  3. Photographing negatives on a light box using the same camera with a 100 mm macro lens

The resulting images are processed by:

  1. For camera images, converting to 16-bit TIFF format with RawTherapee
  2. Using Gimp to crop, straighten, adjust color/gray levels, etc.
  3. The image is saved in Gimp's native format (.xcf) and exported to a losslessly compressed .png file
  4. Finally, three .jpg files of varying sizes and the accompanying .xml file are uploaded to the appropriate directory on the website.

Update as of 5/20/2024

The process has been improved in a number of ways now:

  1. My Canon 70D died and was replaced with a Model 7D Mark II.
  2. Gimp has been replaced with Adobe Photoshop. It is totally worth the price of the prescription, even for a tightwad such as myself.
  3. The Brother scanner is no longer used; it's files don't properly record smooth gradations of tones. This problem was particularly evident on color prints.
  4. Negatives (black and white as well as color) and slides are now photographed against an LED light table with the 7D.
  5. Prints are photographed exclusively with the camera mounted to a tripod, with the lighting arranged to be as uniform as possible while minimizing reflections.