Tag: greenaway

Sepia Saturday edition 303 featured a prompt image of a Halloween greeting card.  Since today is Halloween and Sepia Saturday, I  might as well combine them both and post images of ghouls from the collection of family photos!  These come from the collection of Romayne Louella Greenaway (30 May 1936 – 7 Jan 2014).  They were negatives, and an old size of negative that wouldn’t fit in my negative scanner.  Fortunately, they were flat enough that I was able to lay them on a light box and use my DSLR to photograph them, invert the image, and there they are!  Romayne was my grandmother (step-grandmother if we’re getting technical, but she married my grandfather long before I was born so she was always grandma).  I believe that’s here in the right image with the crazy mask, but it’s hard to tell!  The other images in the series show four children, three of whom are Romayne and her two siblings, but everyone has a mask on, so I can’t be certain who the extra child is or even which child is in which costume.  In the left  image, again, I can’t be sure who that is, but I love it too much to not include it for the theme as well.  It’s a fairly simple costume – big bows on her hair and ankles, long  coat, and a mask!  If I had to guess, I’d say these were taken right around 1950.  The others in the set of negatives show Romayne, and she looks to be about 12 or 13 which is how I ended up at that date estimate.

Even though I’m not at a trick-or-treating age anymore, I’m still treating myself to zombie movies and a Halloween themed cupcake this evening and hope you all are enjoying a little treat for yourselves today too!

Still on theme for this Sepia Saturday, but  I went with damaged negatives instead of photos!  Afterall, the photos are made from negatives, so in the long run, it works out.  These negatives are square format and were subject to some kind of light leak, likey while inside the camera since there are a series of photos with evidence of the same light leak in the same spots.  The photos are of Romayne (Greenaway) Kitko (1936-2013), my grandfather’s second wife.  While we were going through yet another trunk of photos, we found an old paper photo sleeve stuffed full of negatives.  Being the preservation nerd of the family, I grabbed them up and scanned them, because you just never know what you’ll find.  I’m still using a super old scanner, the Canon Canoscan 8400F because it comes with negative carriers for the most popular film types  (except for 127 film), and  it gets the job done.  Unfortunately, damage like this is just impossible to undo – the negative was overexposed from the light leak and it’s not possible to reconstruct data that isn’t there or was blown out by the light leak.  There’s also a little bit of dust/scratches and other damage from age and being improperly stored for so long.

As far as a date/place goes, I’d assume 1948-1952 or thereabouts, taken at her girlhood home in Clearfield County, Pennsylvania.  Romayne looks to be about 15 or so in the photos, maybe younger.  In the first photo, she’s standing with two children, but no one has yet been able to identify those kids.  They don’t seem to be family members, but perhaps neighbors or friends or something like that.  The other two, she’s sitting in front of a car, and in one, it looks like she might be petting a dog standing  near her, but it’s hard to tell with the light leak flare.  Even though these are damaged, they’re still treasured for a peek into her life as a younger girl and because they’re the earliest photos we have of her.  Even damaged photos have their merits and are worth digitally preserving as they are.