Mystery Negatives

As I've been working through the photos I inherited from my grandma, I ran across an old envelope of 3x4 negatives. I assumed they were of our family, but when I finally got around to examining them more closely, I didn't recognize anyone in the images. In this post, I'll share the quick and easy way I got a better look at these negatives so that the mystery could be solved!

I placed them all into a pocket sheet protector, this one for wallet-sized photos. Any such pocket sleeve will do. The idea is to not have to handle the negatives, keeping them free from any oils or debris. Once safely in the sleeve, I opened up a blank Word document on my desktop computer so I would have a bright white screen to backlight the negatives. I don't have a lightbox, so this is the next best thing...and much easier than holding the sleeve up to a bright window!

 

I taped it in place, then with my phone, I took a quick photo of each of the negatives. I wasn't looking for perfection here -- just a clear enough image that would enable me to hopefully identify the people.

Once I had a digital image of each of the negatives, I dropped it into my photo editing program (I still use Picasa but there are obviously tons of options out there). In Picasa, there is an "invert colors" option. A quick click resulted in a decent rendition of the images:

It's amazing how much easier it is to identify a photo than a negative! Once I had these new images, I still didn't recognize the people so I shared them to a family Facebook group. Sure enough, one of my cousins recognized the little girl who happens to be our second cousin. I located her via Facebook and sent her the negatives and some better prints a few days ago. Now she and I have re-connected via Facebook, which is also a good thing!

I've also got two additional batches of photos I've identified in similar ways and am currently trying to track down extended family members via Ancestry who might be interested in them. Old photos and negatives are too precious to just toss. It's worth the effort to get them back to their proper place.

Janet