Weirdo

Slides - DONE!

skh — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 18:21:49 GMT

EDIT:

Entry #7,614:

Slide #10597 Sunset - Orlich Rd. (Red Hook, NY)

DONE with data entry! (as far as I know)

Now to file what I have entered.

And move on to the Hermans slide project which should be fast and does not involve data entry. Yay!

Slides project update

skh — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 18:19:13 GMT

I have just entered the 6,500 slide in the great Grampa Losee Slide Project! The end is not yet in sight but getting there!

I had to order two more boxes that hold over 1,200 slides each for a total of 6 but sounds like I might need one more for this project and once I start on Grampa Hermans' slides I might need a couple more. The Hermans slides aren't anything to write home about, mostly crappy vacation snaps from their trips around the world as old folks - no family members in the shots! I won't be making as complicated a database for them as I am for Grampa Losee's slides so it should go a lot faster. There are 40 carousels of Hermans slides which if full means about 4,000 slides. Yike.

There are very few Hermans slides that are of actual family members, but here's a couple to give you an idea.

From Hermans Family Slideshow

Cousin Sue c. 1964 at the farm house

From Hermans Family Slideshow

Cousins Mike (deceased) and Rob c. 1972

From Hermans Family Slideshow

Cousin Ralph at the farmhouse c. 1976

From Hermans Family Slideshow

Aunt Sally (deceased) c. 1960

Purposeful Photos

skh — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 23:21:59 GMT

Went to do laundry at my folks' house and took some pics after I fed the birds.

From Purposeful Photos

Purposeful Pictures

skh — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 14:57:25 GMT

I thought about starting a new 365 photo project but I really don't have the time, anymore.

So instead I've decided to take 'purposeful' pictures - with the aim of improving how I look at light, especially. The last go, I was primarily concerned with composition (but didn't always pull it off).

This set will also not always accomplish the primary objective, but I'll give it a go!

Here's the gallery so far.

Purposeful Photos

John Losee, not a closeup photographer.

skh — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 04:08:58 GMT

I'm viewing slides again! Saw a bunch from this trip to visit the cousins in MT and thought, gee Grampa really likes his wide-angle shots. Then there's a couple pics of our cousin Ron Losee taking a closeup of flowers that Grampa had taken probably standing up. I think maybe his health got in the way, but I don't remember seeing any older closeups either.

10227 N. Toward Old Baldy 7/4/1979

From Slides-Up

Double Exposure Cyanotype

skh — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 04:01:43 GMT

Another neat image found when scanning pics.
I had scanned this two years ago when I first went through the collection of prints and I'm still mesmerized by it.

From Losee family pics

Pictures of John Losee

skh — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 02:02:14 GMT

Scanning and sometimes re-scanning scads of old Losee family pics. This one seems appropriate for the time of year.

From Losee family pics

Hermans Textile - cataloged

skh — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 19:14:04 GMT

Now the research begins in earnest.

I've photographed and indexed the names on each of the 42 panels.

14 panels have no names, only flowers

3 of those 14 have faded, illegible, inked names that were never embroidered.

The only non-name is one date - 1903 - on one of the panels.

Hermans Textile

I'll be using my access to ancestry.com to look up the folks named to see where they were from.

I recognize some of the names from the Red Hook/Milan NY area.

My great grandfather Clayton Hermans was from Milan and was an only child and his mother died in 1895. This leads me to believe that this item cam from my great grandmother Bertha Kilmer's family. She lived in Annandale (near Red Hook) before she married Clayton.

Here they are in 1906, just married.

From Hermans Kilmer Family 4x6

Happy Birthday, Grampa Losee

skh — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 01:57:14 GMT

My Grandfather John Losee was born on this day in 1907. In honor of that I have taken a random photo. I had the thought a few days ago to take some still life images to force myself to think about color and texture and composition. This is a quicky, but I like how even though I paid thought to the color of the book and the weirdness of the subject matter and its placement on the book's design, two things came unexpectedly out of it. The texture of the surface of the book's cover in contrast to the smooth plastic of the souvenir and the way the light (a 60 watt flourescent bulb, mind you!) came through the plastic and highlighted the critter inside.

Canon 18-55mm lense ISO 400, 55mm, f/5.6, 0.5 sec.

From Misc Shots

John Losee Slide - 1939

skh — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 01:45:22 GMT

Here's one I just entered.

11th August 1939, probably Black Lake, NY.
Unmarked slide other than the photo info, JL initials and date.

Slide Project Progress

skh — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 17:38:08 GMT

So far I have entered the data from over 4,200 slides into a spreadsheet.

I have made a list three pages running of slides I think are great for different reasons that I should get off my butt and share more of.

I bought three of these from Adorama where I got my camera. They are not perfect for easy-access of the slides but they are great for long-term, well organized and acid-free storage! I added a ribbon to each of the inner cases to make them easier to get into in the meantime. They hold over 2k slides each but I may need a 4th box when it's all entered.

Although Grampa's numbering scheme started with a bunch with no numbers from 1939 through 11,200 some odd in November of 1983, I've found that especially in the early part of the collection, he culled a bunch of slides. This is sad, especially when I think of all the great 40s images that must be lost. Some errant slides might be on file with the Elmendorf/Red Hook Historical Society. I know they have a presentation he did called "Red Hook Then and Now" on file and I'm sure they have the original slides. I'm meeting with Patsy Vogel about them sometime in July. There may end up being somewhere between 7 or 8 thousand slides in the collection total when everything is entered.

In the boxes I have I have found that:
- Most slides have JL in the top corner and a catalog number from 1-11,200+.
- A few slides have JL in the top corner and a different number like PR-23 which usually refers to the actual photographer, in this case his son-in-law Paul Rosendahl. The JL in the top served to show which direction to load the slide in the carousel but also perhaps to indicate that it was part of a collection.
- A handful of slides do not have JL in the corner. Some have CL for my Gramm, instead, but most have nothing there at all.

I will need to come up with my own number scheme for the slides that currently do not have numbers but do have JL in the top corner as I feel that these are part of the collection and need to be cataloged properly. I might go with x-100 for example.

When all the slides that I have are entered in the database I will cross-reference it with his note books. It took some digging to find them as they had been separated from the slides over the years. Everywhere he took his cameras he took a tiny notebook and a pencil. He wrote the date, short details and photo info about his subjects shot-by-shot in each one. Sometimes the flash failed, the film had a light-leak, etc and he would mark the pages when he got the slides back from Kodak with this data as well. He always shipped his film directly to Kodak in the mail, which is amazing to someone like me who relies on the immediacy of digital media so much!

I will try to scan some slides to show off, soon!

Some of Grampa Losee's cameras

skh — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:17:28 GMT

John Losee's Cameras

John Losee slides - World's Fair

skh — Mon, 17 May 2010 01:01:11 GMT

4 slides from Grampa's collection from the 1939/40 World's Fair. He must have especially liked these four out of the 20+ slides I've found so far from this event (which he attended three times, twice in 1939 and once in 1940) because he had sealed them in glass. I was amazed to find that I was able to scan them without opening the casing.

This, as far as I can tell, is a demonstration, probably at the GE pavilion, of "lightning" hitting a model of the Trylon and Perisphere. Grampa was a science geek and not a few images in the collection reflect this keen interest.

Something for photo nerds...

skh — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 15:37:01 GMT

On going through on of the boxes of slides, prints and negatives I found 1 sleeve of these strange things... Grampa had written "Dufay Color Transp" on the outside of the envelope. (Also see Wikipedia.)

Photo Transparency by my Grampa, John Losee c. 1938.

There's also this gem, the inside of one of a dozen or so tiny notebooks that Grampa wrote every photo he took down in. This one is from 1945 or so.
I lolled. Priceless.

John Losee photographs

skh — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:47:09 GMT

Poughkeepsie Eagle News Tuesday, March 19th 1940

WILLIAMS GIVES TALK TO RED HOOK GRANGE

A. T. Williams, of the Dutchess County Farm bureau in Pouughkeepsie, gave a talk on “Why Use More Apples?” as part of an apple promotion program held at the Red Hook Grange hall last night. S. B. Hart was originally scheduled to speak, but he was unable to attend because of illness.
The program was suggested by E. Stewart Hubbart, chairman of the New York and New England Apple institute, who also spoke at the meeting, discussing the value of apples as a food and as a commodity on the market.
Pictures in color were shown by John Losee. These films consisted of scenes from farms along the Hudson river and pictures of various phases of apple industry.
The grange developed an exhibit of different types of packages in which apples are wrapped, and recipes for making new uses of the fruit.
The grange also presented as part of the program an original play by Mrs. K. B. Lewis of Red Hook. Red Hook members acted in the play.
A program put on by the young people was followed by an apple quiz led by Mrs. Rosalie Losee (John's mother) and a refreshment period during which apple pie and ice cream was served.
At the next meeting on April 5, first and second degrees will be conferred upon six candidates.

--

My Grampa was an apple farmer until 1945/46 or so. The following are 4 slides one of which was the title of the slide show mentioned above. I've seen many many more including scenes inside a warehouse where workers are sorting apples, a party for the workers after the work is done, etc. I have not yet seen all of the slides in the collection but am sure that there are more to be seen on this subject.

Picking Kings, 10/4/1939

Inspector Amos, 10/7/1939

McIntosh Culls, 9/6/1939

Grampa's Slides...

skh — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:28:44 GMT

I spent hours this weekend organizing and entering slides in my database and found another winner for you all...

My Grampa sure had a sense of humor... I hope!

This is slide #1798 titled "Buck in Pines" taken May 18th, 1944.

Note the chip in his right (HIS right on your left) antler. When I saw this I gasped and said 'it's Fred!!' It's unmistakeably the same deer that he shot and that is mounted across from my desk at my office.

Then I thought this is waaay to weird. How the hell did he get this shot?

Note that there is a tiny bit of sky and something red in the pines where his body ought to be.
Note that I have Fred's mounting receipt from 1936 mounted just below Fred himself on my wall.

Someone held the taxidermy up and Grampa took a picture. Yep. XP

John Losee's slide #593 "Phil Setting Decoys"

skh — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:00:51 GMT

This is one of the first slides I've scanned and it's one of my grampa, John Losee's favorites.

#593 "Phil Setting Decoys" taken on 10/27/40. The photo-settings marked on the slide are "50-200 4.5 1/50" if that makes sense to you folks who take real pictures. I don't know the exact location but one may assume it was taken in the North East - probably on the Hudson River. I don't know who Phil is, just that he was a friend of my grampa's in 1940.

I did some photoshopping to the scanned result to get it to look more like what the slide looks like when projected but really, it's not nearly as crisp or clear. I plan to have this slide sent out to be printed - but wanted to scan it high-res so if it gets lost I still have the image. I bought a very nice but inexpensive scanner that scans slides so there will be a TON more posts like this. Unlike my 365 project, the images will be occasional but always great!

The 11K Slide Project...

skh — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 12:44:11 GMT

This is my Grampa's "red glass slide box" which no longer contains glass slides but normal ones. (I do have a few of his old custom-glass-mounted slides. They are heavy, thick and bound with a sort of red electrical tape. I have not seen any glass slides with catalog numbers.)

Each slot has 2 or 3 slides in it and each drawer contains about about 400 slides. On top of that I've got scads of loose slides, slides in their original little yellow Kodak boxes, slides in plastic slide boxes, metal boxes with individual slots and more than a dozen in 100-count carousels.

The last numbers I've seen from November 1983 - a month before he died - were labeled with 11,000+ numbers which indicates to me that there are probably close to that number of his slides in existence.

I've got my work cut out for me.

I am:
1) viewing all of the slides.
2) choosing really awesome ones to have printed.
3) going to host slide show parties (hopefully)
4) entering all the data from the slides in to a spreadsheet in order to find them easily later.
5) reorganizing the slides in order by their catalog number.

This last point I was unsure I wanted to do, as I didn't feel I should disturb the order that my Grampa had left them in. However, when I'm cataloging them, one of the columns is for their original location so in a way it is preserved.

Besides that, I am the only person who has shown any interest in these images in over a quarter century. As their custodian, I feel that I can do what I deem best to make the images more accessible. Because of the unique structure of my family, there remains only 2 other people who descend from/married into my Grampa's family and one of them told me that her son, the last of this man's line had "never known his Grampa" and gave me things that were his that had he had inherited.

Yep.

More John Losee B+W Photography

skh — Tue, 12 May 2009 19:06:06 GMT

I found another box full of little b+w proofs my grandpa had made. These are as far as I know from color slides, but I've only seen a few. I'm thinking that some might be from large size b+w negatives.

Enjoy!

http://44parkave.com/jl/index-1.html

John Losee Photographs

skh — Mon, 04 May 2009 18:41:46 GMT

If you only click on one link today, make it this one.

http://44parkave.com/jl/

I scanned a small sampling of my grandpa's photos from the 30s/40s. These are black and white test prints, each is only about an inch and a half wide. I'm not sure if slides exist for these as I've only just started digging in.

The man with the double exposure weird technique is my grandpa Losee and the woman is my gramm. I think the Asian bartender's name is Gene. The weird sculptures are from the ~~1930~~ [edit, 1939] NY World's Fair. My grandpa was an apple farmer (among other things), hence the truck and all those apples. The crashed car resulted in at least 2 fatalities - I'm not 100% certain but it might have happened after their wedding reception...