Week 16: Negatives

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Week 16
There are some negatives to family history... Discovering something "negative" about an ancestor, not finding what you were expecting, and even film negatives. This week, explore one of those negatives. Maybe it will turn into a positive!

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    Negatives are a thing of the past ever since everything went digital. No more having to wait to see if that photo turned out right. No more having to wait for a professional photo studio to make copies of your photos. No more waiting in general for your photos. I grew up with negatives so I'm very familiar with them. I even took a photography class my senior year in high school where I learned how to develop negatives and how to print my own photos. There are generations rising up that have no clue what negatives are.

negatives (noun): a photographic image made on film or specially prepared glass that shows the light and shade or color values reversed from the original, and from which positive prints can be made. Oxford Dictionary

    While going through my parents' basement, I have come across boxes of photos that include negatives. If you come across negatives in your ancestors' collections, DO NOT THROW THEM AWAY. Take some time and review the negatives. I've talked about viewing the negatives in a previous post.

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Read the post here:

Photos Scanned From Negatives

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Why should you keep the negatives?
    Believe it or not, there are a few things you can learn from the negatives. Even if you have examined the negatives & have seen you already have copies of these photos, do not get rid of them. At least not just yet. Do you have photos that you have no clue who is in them or where they were taken? Then read on.

Different types of negatives you might find

    When I was going through the negatives, I noticed photos I knew were in my collection as I have already gone through my parents' photos and attempted to organize them. But there were a few stray photos I had no idea where to put them. Who are these people? When were these taken? Where was this taken?

    Depending on the year the photos were taken, the negatives will either be individuals or in strips. If they are in strips, that is helpful with piecing together other photos. Because if a photo is next to another photo on the strip, then you know it was taken on the same roll of film, more than likely on the same day, for the same event. That came in handy when I found a picture of a turkey sitting in a kitchen on the same film strip as my grandparents. So I knew that photo was taken the same day.
    For individual negatives, that will be more tricky if they are spread out in a box. I got lucky because I found the original envelopes that the photos were put in after being developed. The photos were no longer in the envelope, but the negatives were. I was then able to piece together what photos went together. One was a gathering in my grandma's backyard. I was able to take all those photos and put them together in a group.

    Of course, the obvious next reason to keep the negatives is there may be photos on them that you don't have or have never seen. There were a couple photos I already had copies of, but on some negatives were photos I did not have in my collection. I was able to take a picture of the negative using the method I discussed in the blog post I shared above. 

    If you are having trouble figuring out the year or type of negative you have, check out this website I found that shows the different kinds of negatives that were available, the cameras that used those negatives, and the years they were manufactured.

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Guide to Negative Film & Camera Formats

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Now What?
   After you have scanned the negatives, checked the negatives, and learned everything you can about them, what should you do? I am a big supporter of keeping the old negatives just in case. It's like having an extra backup. But if you keep them, you need to make sure they are kept safe.

    The best way to keep them safe is to store them in archival-quality materials. You can order them from many online retailers. Place them in archive quality sleeves and then in archive boxes. Melissa Barker, The Archive Lady, talks more in-depth about this on the link below.

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The Archive Lady: Preserving Photo Negatives

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    What kind of negatives do you have in your collection? Have you checked them out yet? Have you made any discoveries going through them? Share them in the comments below. I'd love to hear about them.