Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

As a photographer, I have been making photographs with my own cameras my entire life. From my first Kodak Instamatic camera as a child, to the Sigma film SLR that I received as gift in high school, to my first digital camera (a Sony Mavica in 1999 or so) to my current DSLR (a Canon 5D Mark IV) — for me photography has been both a lifelong pursuit and a passion as both a photographer and an artist.

Along with my own photography, I enjoy the photography of others. I’ve been very active on Flickr since it started in 2003. I’ve also collected postcards and photography books over the years, consuming great photography both in print and online wherever I can find it on a daily basis.

In November of 2019, visiting my parents down in Los Angeles over Thanksgiving, and shortly before the pandemic started, I stumbled upon a box of 35mm slides in a warehouse in an antique store. I bought the box (I think for $20) and began digging into the slides (mostly old Kodachromes). What I discovered was truly a treasure. The best I could figure out, the slides were made by a photographer named Hugh Stevens Bell. Googling Bell, I learned that he’d been published in National Geographic. Mostly his photos focused on the American Southwest and included many photos of American Indians from the 1940s and 1950s — the collection also included many personal photos of his family and family life.

I was hooked.

A few months later the pandemic hit and I found myself reluctant to go out and make my own photos while also simultaneously fascinated by a new found hobby of collecting vernacular photographs (found photos). The timing seemed right to dive in.

After almost three years now of collecting vernacular photography (and publishing over 10,000 found photos on Flickr), I’ve decided to write this blog post to share my approach to my own collection.

To simplify things I’m defining found photos as physical photos, negatives and slides that have been separated from their original owners.

There are many different types of collectors of found photos. The most popular type of photograph collected is probably the standard black and white snapshot — paper photographs, many casually made, oftentimes by Americans, mostly in the 1920s-1960s. Many of these are now part of serious museum and gallery collections.

Certain types of snapshots are more valuable than others and highly collectible. Photographs of African Americans, gay interest, disaster photography, vintage Las Vegas, New York, or San Francisco all seem to sell at a premium. Additionally many collectors focus on certain types of photographs or subjects in photographs — hand tinted photographs, polaroids, photographs of three women (three graces), photographs of people in Easter bunny costumes or rabbits, photos from vintage photobooths, photos of bicycles or tricycles or women and cars, photos of airplanes and many more categories define individual interest.

Then there are the wider general variety of photographs of family life, of military and war, of vacations and the automobile, and lots and lots and lots of photos of Christmas trees and people fishing.

The most interesting of these snapshots as collected by serious collectors and dealers are oftentimes very artful photography. Sometimes these are historic photographs or made by professional photographers, but quite frequently these photos are also mere happy accidents made by amateurs.

For some collectors, they need the physical manifestation of paper. They need to touch a photograph, feel a photograph, hold the weight of the photograph in their hand and examine it as an object.

My collecting is a bit different.

For me, collecting found photos is more about a process, a process of pulling lost, orphaned images from analog obscurity and elevating them to a digital, widely shared and accessible permanent longevity. I’m not a dealer or a collector for financial gain so it doesn’t matter to me that some of the media I collect has less economic value than others. I am mostly interested in rescuing and publishing interesting imagery. So I will collect snapshots, but I will also collect negatives, slides, photo albums, etc. I will collect black and white imagery and color photographs. I will collect photos from the 1920s-1960s, but I will also collect photos from the 1970s to the present, photos that many collectors deem less desirable.

For the remainder of this post I am going to walk through my process, explaining each step I take in my own collecting.

Acquisition

Found photos can be acquired in many different places. For me, I find the best deals come from as close to the source as I can get. From the best I’ve been able to tell, the most common way for photographs to become separated from an owner are through the death of the owner or through unpaid storage locker bills resulting in lockers being auctioned off.

Estate sales are probably my favorite place to find photos, slides, negatives, etc. Usually these are collections that have not been picked through and are mostly intact. They can also be had much more cheaply than other places. It’s not unusual to pick up a collection of slides at an estate sale (if you can find them) for $20. I bought one collection of 40 carousels of slides for $40. I bought a collection of probably 5,000 negatives for $200.

Estate sales are a lot of work though. You have to drive to the sale, oftentimes wait in line when it opens to get there early enough before the photos are gone, and most of the time they don’t even have photos/slides. Sometimes you’ll research a sale and see a photo of a box of slides in the sale items and then the next day you get there and the family has decided to pull the slides from sale. Still, when you find something good, you usually get something good at a great price.

After estate sales you can also find slides/photos at flea markets, antique/thrift stores, and auctions.

And then there’s the motherlode of all for most collectors of just about anything, eBay.

Every single day thousands of found photographs are sold on eBay. On eBay though you will pay MUCH more for the photos you buy. Buying lots of photos is generally your best value, but oftentimes you find yourself purchasing a lot of photos or slides that have already been picked through by others and you are basically buying a bunch of rejects after everything good has been culled out. Sometimes you can find good dealers who routinely sell high quality lots of photographs, other times you can get an idea of where a seller is sourcing their material (do they have lots of other estate type items for sale? do they identify themselves as a storage locker buyer?).

Finally, tell everyone you know about your collection. I’ve had many family and friends give me old photographs. I’ve also had them refer me to people who are happy to let me have their physical photos in exchange for free digital versions. Scanning at photo labs can be expensive and for many people they would rather have digital versions of their photos that they can look at on their computer or phone or iPad and share on social media, than a box of old slides that they haven’t looked at in 20 years. By the way, if you are figuring out what to do with your old slides and photos and want me to scan them for you for trade, hit me up.

Culling

Once I obtain a collection of images I review the images before deciding which to work with. Sometimes you run into a collection with many great photos, but oftentimes you end up with a collection of photos where someone took 50 photos of their muddy back yard, or flowers, or a boring side of a mountain, or 100 bad fireworks photos. Still, in those collections there are sometimes good photos too — the photo of the proud husband posing his wife in front of the brand new family car in 1956, a photo of that marque in Las Vegas with all the glorious neon from a 1968 vacation, that early family vacation to Disneyland, you know… the good stuff.

For me, culling involves shuffling through physical photos or looking at slides/negatives with a loupe and then making a decision on an image. Images are generally divided into three categories (to scan, maybe to scan, definitely not to scan).

Scanning

There are many different ways to scan photos/slides/negatives. Some people use a DSLR based system and actually rephotograph the image. For me I prefer to use a flatbed photo scanner; in my case I own an Epson Perfection V850 Pro photo scanner. For what I need it does a great job. I can do batches of slides or negatives at once. It comes with scanning software.

I scan my paper photographs at different resolutions depending on the size of the paper photograph. I might scan an 8×10 at 1200 dpi or a small photobooth photograph at 4800 dpi. I scan my slides and negatives mostly at 3200 dpi. Everything I scan is saved into a folder by that job and dated and saved as a TIFF file.

Editing

Once I finish with a scan job I’ll begin editing the images. I treat these adopted photographs the same way that I treat my own photographs. I will work with them in Adobe Lightroom making the adjustments I feel bring out the best in the photo. I will often make multiple versions of the work if I feel it is warranted — sometimes, for example, I might find a great color Kodachrome image also works well in black and white.

Keywording

Keywording is one of my least favorite parts of collecting. It’s boring, it’s monotonous, it’s time consuming… but, keywording is the key to organizing my collection and to making it more searchable in its new digital life. After editing a batch of photos I’ll go through the collection and apply as many keywords as I can. In addition to keywording the brand of media (Kodachrome, Ektachrome, etc) at the time of scan, I’ll also include any dates that I have on a slide or any writing or other types of annotation made by the original owner on a slide or on the back of a photograph — sometimes it’s what’s written on the back of a photograph that makes it the most interesting of all.

In addition to what I have available from the physical photo/negative/slide, if it’s from a single collection, I’ll create a title just for those photos so that they can be properly grouped together later. For example, I found a collection of images from a family named Clouse from Coffeyville, Kansas and so those all get the keyword “The Clouse Collection” which allows me to keep them together online. I also try to identify what’s in a photo the best I can. A photo of the Statue of Liberty also gets the New York City, keyword, etc.

Publishing

As I mentioned earlier, to date I’ve published over 10,000 found photos to Flickr. By the way, these are 1,300 or so that people on Flickr have found most interesting.

Each day I publish anywhere between 50 and 150 photos to Flickr (I’m trying to publish 1,000,000 photos to Flickr before I die). Usually I publish in three batches (morning, noon, night). What I’m doing now is mixing in my new found photos that I finish with my own unpublished archive of photos I’ve taken myself. I find that mixing the two makes my Flickrstream more diverse.

The great thing about publishing my collection to Flickr is that not only can I share it with the world indefinitely (even after my own death hopefully) but the community at Flickr can also participate in the collection. Quite often my friends on Flickr will help me identify the location of a particular photo. One friend suggested tagging all of the photos of a particularly well travelled and photogenic woman in a collection as “Lady Zelig” (a fictional name) in order to group them together. Frequently friends who know much more about cars or airplanes than I do will identify the type of vehicle or even historical background on airplanes, people, locations, etc.

I use SuprSetr to automatically build albums or collections around my keywords for organization on Flickr (thanks Jeremy!)

There is also a vibrant community of other collectors on Flickr. I started my own group (although it is not as active as I’d like) on Flickr called “American Vernacular” where I try to publish much, much more about various sites and articles of interest around vernacular photography (please join and participate). I’ve been particularly impressed by John Van Noate’s collection. John is not only a very serious collector/dealer but one of the great writers on Flickr as well.

I do also publish some of my found photos on Twitter and Instagram from time to time, but really Flickr is my social home on the web these days.

Archiving

This is probably the weakest part of my collecting so far. Once I scan a photograph/slide/negative it basically goes into one of those giant plastic bins (along with thousands of others) and is stored in an insulated room in my attic (part of my home office). Fortunately the Bay Area where I live is never really too hot or too cold and a dark room in an attic may be an ok place for them. I know a lot of more serious collectors probably do more to protect their collections, but this is not a part of my collecting I’ve really been ready to engage with to date — perhaps someday when I’m older and have more time. The disadvantage of this approach, of course, is that in the future it would be almost impossible for me to try to locate a single image amongst the thousands of images all mixed together (although I do try to keep individual collections together the best that I can).

Anyways, I hope for those of you still reading this TLDR post, you got something out of it and feel free to let me know if you have any questions. If you collect vernacular photography please consider publishing your collection to Flickr and hope to see you and engage with you there.

“It seems to me that the subject of Bill Dane’s pictures is the discovery of lyric beauty in Oakland, or the discovery of surprise and delight in what we had been told was a wasteland of boredom, the discovery of classical measure in the heart of God’s own junkyard, the discovery of a kind of optimism, still available at least to the eye.” John Szarkowski, director of photography, Museum of Modern art 1962-1991

I received Bill Dane’s wonderful book, Bill Dane Pictures …it’s not pretty.  50 Years of Photographs I’m still in love, in the mail today.  

For those unfamiliar with his work, Dane has been actively photographing the world around him for over 50 years.  Since 1969 he has generously mailed 69,000 of his photographs as postcards to people.  More recently he has been active on Flickr where he continues day in and day out to share his world with the rest of us.

Yesterday he shared a diner scene from Tracy, California in 1970, earlier today he shared a bit more abstract flower from Oakland in 2011.  

As you work through his flickstream you find yourself moving from Las Vegas in 1972 to Mexico City in 1974 to Olympia, Washington in 2018.  The one constant thing is that Bill is there with his camera walking you through his unique view of the world.  His view of the world, as his book title admits, is not always pretty, but it is like no other photographer you’ve probably ever seen.  It’s not easy work to get through but it’s rewarding when you do.

Accompanying his images in the book are his own sttaccato like typed words.  Like a beat poet Bill opines on his own photographic path as well what he sees around him — words to go with the pictures.  It’s part personal history/biography, part documentary, part politics, part life vision — always poetic.

“Hunt treasure   strike-snap-gather   edit   judge

I still photograph like it’s 1969   sort of

Advancing  weaving  focused scanning   dam  Bill  hold still

Leica Rangerfinders  straightforward refinement  guess settings real good

Film has wonder dept   forging Tri-X  darkrooms   mail

Costco for color prints to edit  send

2007 My last film camera  Contax SLR zoom-macro

Digital  Nikon D80 with the 28-105 macro”

In my own artist’s statement, I quote the great Charles Bukowski who once said that endurance is more important than truth.  As far as endurance goes Bill’s got it.  He’s got it in spades and you have to admire that.  Bill’s spent time hanging out at workshops with Friedlander and Arbus.  He’s had shows at MoMA, his photographs hang in the permanent collections of MoMA, SFMOMA, the Art Institute of Chicago — and yet here he is day in and day out still putting work up out there for the public where?  At Flickr? Yes, at our beloved Flickr.

Interestingly enough the title of Bill’s book actually comes from Bukowski’s poem “I Met A Genius.”  The poem is about a 6 year old boy on a train ride with Bukowski who sees the sea for the first time and remarks upon seeing it that “it’s not pretty.” It’s the sort of innocent honest insight that can come from a child who has not been saddled down with society’s version of the sea as a remarkable and beautiful scene, the way most artists might present it.

Bill gives us a messy world, it’s not always pretty, but it’s worthwhile to see it as he shares it. It is a bit of a junkyard as Szarkowski suggests, but there is beauty in the junkyard as well.

Weighing in at over 300 pages of high quality printing and limited to only 500 copies, do yourself a favor and pick this one up before it sells out and before one of these big name museums decides to do a retrospective. You’ll have an original collector’s item. Bill Dane is a treasure — and so are his flickrstream and book.

More from Collector Daily here.

Some photos from Bill’s Flickrstream below.

In case you missed it recently, Google Photos has decided to end their free unlimited photo hosting service. Beginning in June of next year users will be limited to 15GB of space before being asked to pay for more storage. How much you’ll have to pay will depend on how much storage you use. Unfortunately for me, I have more photos than fit their top tier $100/year plan, so even if I wanted to pay I’d be capped out of the service.

While I don’t begrudge Google, a trillion dollar company that makes billions of dollars a year, from wanting to make even MORE money, I am offended by the bait and switch approach that they took with Google Photos. Offering a user the first hit for free is classic dealer marketing. A lot of time and energy goes into organizing your photos on ANY photo sharing site and when someone spends hundreds or even thousands of hours organizing their photos at a site only to be priced out of the site, those are countless hours that you will never get back.

Fortunately for me I’ve spent a lot less time using Google Photos for the past few years. Google’s consistent bad faith across photo hosting/sharing products has left me very skeptical of anything they do anymore.

Some of you may remember Picasa (Google killed it). I was a user of that. I also was a big user of Google Buzz (they killed that too). Then I put hundreds of hours into my photography on Google+ (once again RIP). We used to do photowalks and hangouts and lots of other fun things around photography with Google+. Here’s my old Google+ url.

Initially I was super excited about Google Photos, but that changed over time. I was disappointed that one of their early features, photo facial recognition, didn’t really work for me. It limited the service to 200 faces and unfortunately for me when the service launched it grabbed a bunch of faces of musicians I’d photographed performing at Coachella and chose those as the ones to tag. There was no way to delete those and have it choose people who were actually my family, friends, neighbors, etc.

I was also disappointed that the hours and hours and hours I’d spent keywording all my photos in Adobe Lightroom were stripped out of my uploads to Google Photos. I’m not sure why Google would want to remove one of the best ways for me to search my photos from their service but for whatever reason they strip this data.

Still, Google Photos was free (even though it downsized my photos). It’s hard to complain about free — until they locked my gmail. Last year I received a rather ominous message from Google threatening that unless I paid them for more storage they were going to turn my gmail off.

It turns out that even though Google Photos claimed to be able to convert my photos to high quality JPEGs with free unlimited storage, that TIFF files generated by the software program Analog Efex Pro (ironically a former Google owned product before they jettisoned that as well) were not being converted by Google Photos and were sucking up my gmail storage which was then demanding payment from me. They actually locked my gmail and I missed several important emails that were blocked during this fiasco.

By this point I was about ready to delete my Google Photos account — except I could not find ANY way to delete my Google Photos account. That’s right you can’t just delete Google Photos. You have to delete your entire Google account including your Gmail!

While this is my unhappy story and experience with Google Photos, many, many users were duped into signing up for a free service that they thought would protect, as Google put it, their “lifetime of memories.” Now Google is demanding money from these users.

To me it seems wrong (even evil — remember their old motto “don’t be evil” that they also abandoned?) that Google would bait and switch so many users on this product. You can’t/won’t get the many hours that you spent organizing your photos on Google Photos back. Some will just begrudgingly pay up. What I see is one of the world’s largest companies who used a classic monopolistic tactic to grab market share by pricing out and hurting smaller competitors and now wants to profit from their move.

Once burned shame on you. Twice, three times, four times, five times, six times burned, shame on me. I will never trust Google with another product again.

Thankfully there is an alternative to Google Photos, good old trustworthy Flickr. Here is a thoughtful analysis done by Jeremy Zero comparing Google Photos and Flickr.

I’ve been using Flickr since 2004 and as long as I can remember my Flickr Pro account has remained unlimited. Flickr/SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill even recently re-iterated Flickr’s commitment to honoring their unlimited service. While Flickr may not be a trillion dollar company or make billions of dollars every year like Google does, they are a small company that cares about photographers and your photography. They also do a great job storing and sharing your full high-res, uncompressed, high quality images (and they even retain your photo keywords when you upload them there). I feel much better supporting an ethical small business than a trillion dollar company using monopolistic bait and switch tactics to try to drive the smaller guy out of business.

You can find me on Flickr here. If you are an American Photographer come join the American Photographer Group I administer on Flickr and say hello.