News

Robert Perkins, my father, the 2nd guy from the left above, with the hat, runs the Army Pictorial Center.  I scanned/transcribed a photo album he received and posted it here as a guest family.  I'll take it down when he posts it on his site.

Guest Family:  Army Pictorial Center

 

Added a cast page.  Every person with a first and last name, from all 90 families, in one place, making it easier to search for specific names.

Converted everything to a 5-column format to take less time scrolling.

4 batches of photos returned to their families, 32 so far.

18 new families posted, 26,856 new images, 72,483 images total.

Might pass 100 families and 100,000 photos with the next update.

COVID

Pre-COVID new photos came in from thrift stores and swapmeets, but since COVID started I've been buying photo lots on Ebay in order to try and minimize my exposure to other people and keep my family safe. 

With photo lots from swapmeets and thrift stores I usually knew that a particular batch of photos came from the same family.  With bulk photo lots bought by the pound from Ebay, usually from the same seller, the photos are less tightly bound to a single family.  Most of a family's photos still show up in a single lot, but there are usually a few photos from that family spread among the others. 

The Purge

I haven't got around to doing a purge yet.  Some of the new photos were acquired less than 6 months ago, so if I do a purge, I'm going to wait until at least June 18, 2022, 6 months from now.

Of the 45,627 photos at Lost Photos, there are 27,558 with years written on them.  Here is a chart of when the photos were taken:


9 batches of photos returned to their families, 28 so far.

39 new families posted, 28,801 new images, 45,627 images total.

Family 34 is up. 1,378 images in this set It's the Whitsett family.	Family 35 is up. 3,151 images in this set.	Family 36 is up. 328 images in this set It's the Johnston / Reeves family.	Family 37 is up. 128 images in this set.	Family 38 is up. 2,502 images in this set.
Family 39 is up. 883 images in this set.	Family 40 is up.  222 images in this set.	Family 41 is up.  316 images in this set.	Family 42 is up.  210 images in this set.	Family 43 is up.  974 images in this set.
Family 44 is up.  3,283 images in this set.	Family 45 is up.  179 images in this set.	Family 46 is up.  303 images in this set.	Family 47 is up.  93 images in this set. It's the Bergman / Gregory / Shuptrine family.	Family 48 is up.  44 images in this set.
Family 49 is up.  667 images in this set.	Family 50 is up.  136 images in this set. It's a freemason family.	Family 51 is up.  314 images in this set.	Family 52 is up.  538 images in this set.	Family 53 is up.  1,118 images in this set.
Family 54 is up.  219 images in this set.	Family 55 is up.  813 images in this set.	Family 56 is up.  151 images in this set.	Family 57 is up.  19 images in this set.	Family 58 is up.  91 images in this set.
Family 59 is up.  3,774 images in this set. It's the work of Dr. Elinor S Benes.	Family 60 is up.  58 images in this set.	Family 61 is up.  27 images in this set. It's a bar mitzvah for Scott William Crane.	Family 62 is up.  126 images in this set. This lady liked her cats.	Family 63 is up.  179 images in this set.
Family 64 is up.  805 images in this set. It's the Dudley family.	Family 65 is up.  183 images in this set. It's the Dulinski family.	Family 66 is up.  2,140 images in this set. It's the Kohl / Kreutz family.	Family 67 is up.  404 images in this set.	Family 68 is up.  1,121 images in this set.
Family 69 is up.  253 images in this set.	Family 70 is up.  158 images in this set.	Family 71 is up.  159 images in this set.	Family 72 is up.  1,354 images in this set. It's the Winters family.

The Purge

At or just after the 5 year anniversary for Lost Photos, which will be in October 2021, fifteen months from now, there will probably be a purge.  Storage space is limited now and will be even tighter in October 2021 if photos continue to accumulate at the same rate.  All existing material (photos, documents, ID's, etc.) could be placed in a storage unit, but that would introduce a new, ongoing financial drain and a risk of all of the material being lost if Lost Photos goes out of business or forgets to pay the storage unit.  This is unlikely, but since this is how most of the photos came to Lost Photos in the first place- people losing their storage units, contents went to auction, Lost Photos bought the photos- it would be tempting fate to put the photos back in a similiar situation.

Material obtained in the 6 months before the purge, April 2021 to October 2021, will not be destroyed / disposed of / sold until a possible purge at the 10 year mark.  This will make sure that material obtained shortly before the 5 year purge will be maintained long enough to give each family a chance to find their material or be found and contacted by Lost Photos. 

If / when the purge happens, here is what will happen to these 4 categories of material:

1)  Slides will be combined into one group lot and sold through Ebay, Amazon, or some other means.  All proceeds would go into Lost Photos' account, not the personal account of any of its board members.

2)  Print photos from around 1930 and earlier will be combined into another group lot and sold through Ebay, Amazon, or some other means.  All proceeds would go into Lost Photos' account, not the personal account of any of its board members.

3)  Print photos after about 1930 and all negatives will be disposed of.

4)  Any other material containing personally identifiable information (PII), including but not limited to driver's licenses, social security cards, passports, and birth certificates will be destroyed (micro-cut shredded) and then disposed of.

Many thanks to Epson for their donation of an FF-680W scanner.

While I am happy with my old scanner, it accumulated enough nicks and scratches on the scanning bed to start becoming noticeable in the scanned images. The new Epson FF-680W is a sheet-fed scanner where I can put a bunch of photos in the input tray, like paper in a printer, so I don't have to place each printed photo on a scanning bed. A happy surprise- I did not realize before it arrived, but the Epson FF-680W is a USB 3 scanner, so file transfer is much faster than my old USB 2 scanner.

Here's the product page for the Epson FF-680W.

4 batches of photos returned to their families, 19 total so far.

11 new families posted, 3,499 new images, 16,826 images total.

Family 23 is up.  182 images in this set.	Family 24 is up.  699 images in this set.	Family 25 is up.  29 images in this set.	Family 26 is up.  53 images in this set.	Family 27 is up.  60 images in this set.
Family 28 is up.  28 images in this set.  Coincidence.	Family 29 is up.  128 images in this set.	Family 30 is up.  40 images in this set.	Family 31 is up.  974 images in this set.  WWII re-enactor / vehicle rebuilder.	Family 32 is up.  219 images in this set.
Family 33 is up.  1,087 images in this set.

Policy Update:

I’m starting to run into batches of photos and documents that fall into a category I did not expect to have- people who acknowledge that a batch of photos is from their family, but who either do not want the photos or who don’t respond or respond very slowly, multiple days between responses.

Lost Photos’ mission statement is “To collect and preserve historical photos and other media, make the material available to the public online at no cost, and return the material to surviving family members on request.”

If someone refuses their photos, I will throw the photos away because that is their request.

If someone claims a batch of photos as theirs, but refuse to say what they want done with the photos, they are not requesting the return of their photos and the photos can’t be scanned and posted to the web site. Saying they want the photos, but refusing to say how / where they want the photos returned ('I want the photos but I won’t tell you where to send them / drop them off”) will be considered a refusal to say what they want done with the photos. Because both paths (return vs. scan and post) to deal with the photos are blocked, after a point in time no less than 2 weeks after they claim a batch of photos as theirs, the photos will be thrown away, with a minimum of 2 weeks warning to them before that happens.

If someone claims a batch of photos as theirs, wants the photos, and maintains active contact with Lost Photos, and there is a logistics issue (grandma died in California, left multiple tote boxes there, rest of family is on the east coast, and neither Lost Photos nor the family can afford shipping), then the photos will not be thrown away and will be saved until shipment can be arranged.

Regarding the mission statement, it says that photos will be visible to the public for free, but it does not say that photos will be returned to their family for free. This was an error on my part- I meant that photos will be visible to the public for free, and that photos will be returned to their families for free. There is an exception I should clarify here- the additional cost of returning the photos to the families (gas for local deliveries, shipping for deliveries outside of southern California) will be covered by Lost Photos, unless that cost is beyond Lost Photos’ ability to cover (ex: multiple tote boxes shipped to the other side of the country). If there is a shipping charge that can’t be covered by Lost Photos and the family pays for shipping, only the cost of shipping will be paid by the family. The cost to Lost Photos of acquiring the photos will never be paid by the family.

Update:  Several new Sets of photos.  Returned 3 sets to their families, 15 sets total.  Lots of scanning, cropping, color correcting.

Family 22 is up.  It's the Doull / Tothill / Redman / Bailey family.  1,535 images in this set.

Donations page up and running at Crowdrise.

January 2019

Family 21 is up again, now with 1,989 images in this set.  I thought the first packet of photos, 343 of them, was a separate family, in a larger box with packets of photos from other families.  I was wrong.  This is probably still a multi-family group of photos, but there are photos from the same family in different packets.

January 2019

Family 21 is up.  It's the Hoiten family.  343 images in this set.

July 2018

Just posted Family 20, which appears to be the Caulfield / Ritter / Southard family.  619 images in this set.

May 2018

Scanned all of slides so I could put them in storage.  About 16,000 slides when I get around to formatting and posting them.

Just posted family 19, a multi-family batch of photos.  Found one real-life family, whose photos won't be posted.  Their photos will be returned to them for free. 

Family 19 is split into two pages.  Family 19 has photos I couldn't separate into sub-groups.  Family 19-A has photos I could separate into sub-groups.  2,585 images in this set.

August 2017

I collect photos, then try to find living family members and return the photos, then (if I can't find living family members) scan and post the photos.  I've been collecting new batches of photos these last few months.  Currently closer to 30,000 new photos, at max capacity in my work area, so it's time to shift to scanning.

Just posted family 18, the family of Dr Alfred Guido Randolph Schloesser, whose daughter (Daisy Schloesser) married Eric E Eastman (student and instructor at Iowa State College's agronomy department in the 1910's.  1,344 images in this set.


Family 18

April 2017

5 batches of photos (total) returned to surviving friends / family members. Some returned in person, some returned by mail (no charge).

Accumulating photos faster than I can process them. Currently feeding the slide scanner. Should be somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 to 20,000 new images if (when!) I get caught up.

December, 2016

Acquired a batch of paperwork and a few photos about a gentleman who served in a bomber group in WWII.  Paperwork included assorted WWII military forms, post-war VA paperwork, stories about his life, medical paperwork up to the 2000's, DOB, and SSN.  His daughter was mentioned in the genealogy section, with enough information and a name that was unusual enough to identify this surviving family member.  The daughter was contacted and all of her father's paperwork and photos were returned to her at no cost.