A few months ago, my father gave me my Grandparent’s holiday slides which he’d had stored in his garage since my Gran passd away some years ago. Oh behold the treasure trove of unexplored goodies!
While Dad kindly gave me the slide carosel and some portable screens for viewing, the inconvenience of loading it was too much for me to even be bothered with.
So they sat in the garage for months.
Then I started the process of transcribing Grandad’s War diary. He talks repeatedly in the diary about getting his photos developed. The thought crossed my mind, what if the slides I had stored in my garage and previously in Dad’s garage, were his war photos?
Curiousity finally got the better of me a couple of weekends ago. On a sunny Saturday afternoon, I grabbed the first of the two large boxes.
I sat on the floor in the sun and randomly picked out slides from the rows.
What a disappointment!
For the most part they were holiday shots from the 1970s. Miles upon miles of boring scenery and random buildings from their trip through Europe and then the UK.
There were a handful of gems amongst the crap, ones of me as a toddler with my Grandparents, photos of their Diamond wedding anniversary, my Aunt’s 21st birthday and so on.
I got a slide scanner and have digitised all the “good ones”. Which comes to around 80 photos – out of the literally thousands of them.
The ones with family in are interesting, and I will be sharing these with my cousins and extended family on Facebook but the vast majority will be thrown out. They are meaningless to anyone except my Grandparents.
There were a small handful that were interesting, the ones that had people in them, even random strangers, or cars or buses. The fashions in these 40 year old photos themselves are interesting.
It makes me reconsider some of my habits when taking holiday photos. For the most part, I try to get scenes and places without other tourists in them. If possible I crop them out. But now I am start to think why? In 40 years, would I rather see them than the buildings or scenery?
Also in this digital age, slides are useless, even in the 1970s it was an strange choice. I keep my holiday digital photos on CD – a copy at home and second copy at my Mum’s place. CDs are starting to become something that people don’t purchase now. It will shortly be time to consider another method of storing these photos.
Finally, thank goodness for Gran’s OCD tendancies, as 80% of the slides have the place names on them along with dates. If they have people in them, they are named. Its frustrating to view the handful that aren’t labelled like ones of a wedding where I have no idea who the people in the photos are.
At some point I will be throwing most of the slides away – it seems a shame as they held thousands of memories to my grandparents, but ones that no one else is probably interested in.
14 Weeks Worth of Socks 
Really fascinating! I love looking at old photos and these are really neat. Coming from the UK, I especially love the London ones. Thanks for sharing!
Glad you liked them! 🙂
This is great! You make a good point.. I also try to keep the people out of my photos.
Yes it was a surprise to me. Also that all the scenery ones will most likely be dumped eventually as they are of no interest to anyone. Sad really. I think I will put down the camera a bit more when I travel and just enjoy the moment.
Great photos, though you might want to revisit the caption on that first wedding shot – “my Aunt second from the left” seems a bit unfair on your aunt when the 2nd on the left is sporting a mo & a tux 🙂
Well these days…
LOL, will fix that now – before she sees it!
Love old photos, these are great.
they are great aren’t they? 🙂
Ohh Sock Mistress Please don’t give-up on your photo taking… someone will sit n go through them one day n have a good laugh at fashions go wooh at how some place has changed etc… We had thousands upon thousands of slide my folks had taken of their wondering – world wide. I remember when our church wanted a fundraiser Dad n Mum would get their latest slides out n make them into a story where Mum would read her script by the light of the projector n as time advanced they recorded it all on reel to reel tape recorder Ohh the advancement… ha ha ‘Slide nights’ were such a great night out… I saw some of the ‘shows’ so many times I could recite them myself… 😀 Sadly when we went through the house after we lost Mum we found although the slides had been well packed in the canisters… our Ozzie heat had a bad effect on the emulsion on the slides n we lost them all… they had grown into each other… So do think twice about chucking them just in case some of the extended family do know who is in that photo… My sister n I are off to UK this year to visit where our Dad was born raised n worked in Wales so we will have heaps of photos but what the heck I know I will enjoy looking at them from time to time… Enjoy… ❤
Thanks for your lovely comment,sorry to hear about your parents slides though. I would be happy to send you a thousand or so of mine 😉 LOl
“Maybe Germany?”
It is indeed Germany and Cologne to be precise, it would have been West Germany at the time your grand parents visited. Cafe Reichard is still there today, it does look a little smarter but still recognisable as the same place as in the photograph.
Great photos, look forward to seeing some more.
Awesome, thanks heaps for the update! 🙂
[…] I inherited my grandparents holiday photos – what I have learnt… – who would have thought my grandparents crappy old slides would have been of interest… but […]
[…] what do I do with my grandparents holiday photos? These are on slides, sitting in the garage, along with the slide carousel. The screen that […]