Photoshopping in 1909

    An incredible image done by my grandfather in 1909.  The text at the top is what was written on the back of the photo.

    I'm pretty sure that's Grandpa seated at the table, contemplating the bottle.  But that's not a label on the bottle; it's an image of a friend of his.  There is some scratchiness around the bottle's edge, so I'm guessing he superimposed the second, smaller portrait image on the larger photograph.

   But how?  I don't have the negative, and for all I know, it might have even been an old "thick glass" one, since the picture's in sepia.  But I'll vouch for the positive "as is".

    Grandpa did some other image-manipulation tricks - like putting a mirror image of his young daughter in a picture to make it look like they were twins.  But unless he traveled forward in time, bought a copy of Photoshop (and a computer), I'm at a loss to explain how he pulled this off.

Childhood Home

    Oh my.  I simply have to visit Google Earth more often.  They've added some fantastic features, including "Street View".  So I can now revisit my childhood home, back in Lenhartsville, Pennsylvania and see how it's changed in the half-century since we left it.



    First of all : no, that door in the middle of the wall is not photoshopped.  Until recently (meaning 1993, when I last had a chance the house in person), there were porches for each of the three floors, and that door opened out onto the second-story one.

     Second, we actually shared the house with another family.  We lived in what amounts to the left-four windows' worth of space.  They lived in the right-three.  There was also a basement, which means there was lots of room and lots of rooms.  The stones in the facing have either been redone or repainted.  I remember them as various shades of gray.

   The side yard has changed extensively since my childhood.  When we lived there, there were two huge maple trees along the left-hand fence.  And in front of the fence, we had a christmas-type tree that was about 5' tall; which had rocketed to about 30' tall when I was there in '93.  We had a backyard patio, which I remember my dad making by laying a sh*tload of hexagon-shaped cement pieces.  And that shed in the back yard is new.

    Still, the yard looks quite nice, and the structure itself hasn't changed too much.  It's good to see it still standing.  No one knows how old it is, but it was a hotel during the Civil War.

Family Portrait

Here's a photo of a bunch of my extended family. That's Lucy and Lucien in the lower right. I posted a picture of Lucy a couple years ago. You can see it here. She's held up pretty good over the past 24 months, hasn't she? . You can read more about this fabulous display here.