Kasl farm

[ChiefBroom]

I hope some here find these interesting. The photo below was scanned in around 1996 on an HP 4p at, I think, 1600 dpi (or whatever was the highest resolution available). It made a very large tif file, and the detail revealed was incredible to me at the time. My favorite college professor taught Trans-Mississippi West American History and had been director of the Nebraska Historical Society. I showed him the scan when he visited us in Denver once, and he rattled off how photos of this type were taken by traveling photographers, what equipment they used, etc., all of which I failed to write down and can no longer remember.

The more I messed around with old photos taken in and around this particular house, in which my grandmother and my father were both born, the more they got hooks into me. Not long, maybe a year or two, after I made the scan, I bought the first version of a Photoshop plugin called Genuine Fractals, which enables enlargement of photos without pixelation. I'm sure someone will offer a better explanation of what it really is and how it works. Included below are three examples. The reduction in image size that occurs in uploading these images significantly reduces the quality, but you can at least get an idea of the potential.

I'm not absolutely sure it happened, but it seemed to me that the farm photo was slightly faded by the scanning process, which would be regretable on the one hand, but on the other seemed worth the sacrifice to bring these images to life. I made essentially a poster sized image of Sophie, whose eyes I find to be haunting.

The seated man is my great-grandfather. His grandfather homesteaded the place in 1874.

A question I have is what is the very best scanner to use for photographs such as this?

 

[celestino]

Ken, that is a great photo! i sure wish i could offer some help. Good luck.

 

[fast14riot]

I don't know about scanning, but a large format photographic reproduction will capture the finest of details in resolution of the highest order. Basically taking a picture of a picture. Don't know if you desire it to be digital, but it would be a great start to test out different processes rather than keep subjecting the original to various forms potentially damaging lights. Preservation is the first priority.


-Xander

 

[StillShaving]

Great photo and scene, must be early 20th century. And a nice home for that time period. Lot of detail preserved in that scan, I am surprised how clear his hands show up.

 

[ChiefBroom]

Great photo and scene, must be early 20th century. And a nice home for that time period. Lot of detail preserved in that scan, I am surprised how clear his hands show up.

Thanks. The photo was taken in 1901.

 

[smalltank]

Very nice..thanx for sharing...

 

[ChiefBroom]

I spent much of my childhood in and around this north central KS farm house, and I have at least one specific memory of my grandma showing me these photos when I was a small child. I remember in particular the one in the OP from 1901. But I never had much interest in them until I was drafted to assist my daughter in an 8th grade genealogy project about 12 years ago. What finally served to focus my attention on the photos then was a kind of cognitive dissonance I experienced when looking at the one (first in the thread) from 1901 next to the one (first below) from 1911. Something was off.

The side of the house with an open door (more or less facing the camera) in the earlier photo appeared to match the left-facing side of the house in the 1911 photo. But the grade in the 1901 image didn't conform with 1) subsequent photos, 2) my memory, or 3) a careful inspection I made on my next trip back home to visit. It drove me crazy. I ended up pulling out every photo I had with any recognizable part of the house in it and laid them out of a table. I knew it had to be the same structure, but couldn't make it fit the space. The grade wasn't right. The trees weren't right. Even the light seemed wrong somehow.

Solving the mystery turned into an obsession. Eventually, I got around to asking my dad about it, and he remembered hearing that the house (many years before he was born there in 1932) had been moved on sleds to its present location from an original site that was roughly 1/8 mile to the south and a little to the west. Sure enough, I found remnants of a cut limestone foundation in the pasture. And some research at the courthouse turned up a township map from 1886, which also indicated a dwelling near that spot.

So that settled that, but by then the photos had me under a different spell. It was mind-bending to lay them out chronologically and see the effects of passing years on both the place and the people, who by turns were born, played, grew up, gave rise to the next generation, worked to make a life, and then passed away from there.

No one else here is going to connect with any of these in the same way I do, and this is a photography not a family history Forum. But I thought a selection of these images might be interesting to at least a few others here, and perhaps even spur some to gather and survey what they have along similar lines. I'll try adding at least a couple per week and see what happens.

Photo 1 (1911): Taken from the west-north-west. The baby in the carriage is my paternal grandmother, Lucille Sunshine Kasl, born in the house in 1910.

Photo 2 (1918): Taken from the west-south-west. The house was extended to the north (left), adding two bedrooms and a hallway. The woman is Josie Kasl (the young mother holding baby Ben in the 1901 photo), and the man to her left is Frank Kasl (husband seated on the implement in the 1901 photo). I'm not sure which, but one of the young men standing to the side of Frank and Josie is Ben at 17 or 18.

[Note: resizing, compression, and apparent sharpening of these high resolution scans significantly degrades the images. The originals are much higher in quality.]

 

[StillShaving]

Nice photos and story, thanks for sharing with us. Don't feel compelled to answer these questions, but were those your grandmother's older siblings or cousins in the photos of post #1? I will say I was a little confused by the shape/orientation of the house in all three photos, that in the last 2 pictures of the house that is either a different tree in the background or the middle section of the outside wall went from 2 windows down to 1. I guess they moved the windows around as they remodeled and expanded the house.

 

[ChiefBroom]

Nice photos and story, thanks for sharing with us. Don't feel compelled to answer these questions, but were those your grandmother's older siblings or cousins in the photos of post #1? I will say I was a little confused by the shape/orientation of the house in all three photos, that in the last 2 pictures of the house that is either a different tree in the background or the middle section of the outside wall went from 2 windows down to 1. I guess they moved the windows around as they remodeled and expanded the house.

In the very first photo in the thread, the man seated on the implement is Franks Kasl, my grandmother's father; the woman holding a baby is Frank's wife, Josie; the baby is Ben, my grandmother's oldest brother; and the girl standing by the dog is Josie's sister, Sophie.

In the 1918 photo, Frank, Josie, and Ben all appear 17 years older. Another brother is in that photo as well, but I don't know which off hand.

The house was moved between 1901 and 1911 (the photo with my grandmother in the carriage), so trees don't serve comparison. One chimney, however, does. The 1911 photo was taken from the west-north-west (I just see that I need to make a correction above), so facing predominantly west, i.e., the side of the house with a door to the left (behind the bushes) is facing north. That side corresponds with the side of the house with an open door (behind Sophie's head) in the first photo in the thread.

Between 1911 and 1918, the house was extended north, so from the same side with the door referenced above (to the left of the carriage and behind Sophie's head). This makes the tree on the east side of the house in the 1918 photo appear as though it's in a different place than in the 1911 photo, but it's not. Same tree, just a little taller.

The middle window on the west side (facing camera) side of the house in the 1918 photo does appear to have been changed from double to single.

Make sense?

 

[Legion]

So, are the originals paper, glass plate negs or tin-types? That will dictate what sort of scanner you should use.

 

[ChiefBroom]

So, are the originals paper, glass plate negs or tin-types? That will dictate what sort of scanner you should use.

All paper

 

[Legion]

Take a look at one of these. It is not a professional piece of equipment, but it does do a very good job, at a price that is within reach for home use. It also has the added benifit of scanning 35mm AND 120 film. 9600 dpi is not to be sneezed at.

http://www.canon.com.au/For-You/Faxes-Scanners/CanoScan-Scanners/9000F

 

[ChiefBroom]

Take a look at one of these. It is not a professional piece of equipment, but it does do a very good job, at a price that is within reach for home use. It also has the added benifit of scanning 35mm AND 120 film. 9600 dpi is not to be sneezed at.

http://www.canon.com.au/For-You/Faxes-Scanners/CanoScan-Scanners/9000F

Thanks for the recommendation. I just took a quick look at it. The price is certainly nice. I'd be willing to spend more, but for my application I'm not sure there's a good reason to. I'll dig into this one some more.

Thanks again.

 

[StillShaving]

In the very first photo in the thread, the man seated on the implement is Franks Kasl, my grandmother's father; the woman holding a baby is Frank's wife, Josie; the baby is Ben, my grandmother's oldest brother; and the girl standing by the dog is Josie's sister, Sophie.

In the 1918 photo, Frank, Josie, and Ben all appear 17 years older. Another brother is in that photo as well, but I don't know which off hand.

The house was moved between 1901 and 1911 (the photo with my grandmother in the carriage), so trees don't serve comparison. One chimney, however, does. The 1911 photo was taken from the west-north-west (I just see that I need to make a correction above), so facing predominantly west, i.e., the side of the house with a door to the left (behind the bushes) is facing north. That side corresponds with the side of the house with an open door (behind Sophie's head) in the first photo in the thread.

Between 1911 and 1918, the house was extended north, so from the same side with the door referenced above (to the left of the carriage and behind Sophie's head). This makes the tree on the east side of the house in the 1918 photo appear as though it's in a different place than in the 1911 photo, but it's not. Same tree, just a little taller.

The middle window on the west side (facing camera) side of the house in the 1918 photo does appear to have been changed from double to single.

Make sense?

Make's sense now. Also serves as a reminder of how much more self reliant folks had to be back then, where the ability to build or modify your home was a much more common skill.

In that first photo, do you know what type of implement that was? Sort of looks like a seeder, but its been a long time since I have been on the farm.

 

[ChiefBroom]

Same house photographed from the south side (i.e. looking north) in 1921. The man in the car is Ben, my grandmothers oldest brother (the baby held by Josie in the 1901 photo). Ben saw heavy action in Europe during WWII. He died in an auto crash in 1947 while touring California. Ben nurtured my dad's love of hunting. He let my dad use his rifle and shotgun while he was away at war.

 

[Alacrity59]

That photo reminds me of a line from Corner Gas (Canadian sit-com set in Saskatchewan). New comer to town "It's all flat out here with nothing to see". Town guy "No it is wonderful . . . nothing to block your view" I'm paraphrasing from memory.

 

[ChiefBroom]

That photo reminds me of a line from Corner Gas (Canadian sit-com set in Saskatchewan). New comer to town "It's all flat out here with nothing to see". Town guy "No it is wonderful . . . nothing to block your view" I'm paraphrasing from memory.

That's perfect!

 

[infotech]

Pretty cool photos. I used to like exploring old abandoned farmhouses that were down the back roads in the town I grew up in.

Do you have a recent photo of the house?

 

[coyotewhisper]

I took several photos of my dad from WWII to the local camera store. From the original prints they made a new restored photos that turned out great.

 

[sarimento1]

Epson's Vision scanners 600/700/750 are in the 6400 dpi range, which is more resolution than your original prints.
the most improvement in final print quality, will be a result of scanner, restoration and printing technique.
great historic photos.