Alright, so “Oklahoma 2009″… this takes me back. It wasn’t some big, planned-out project, more like a spur-of-the-moment thing that turned into a bit of a rabbit hole. It all started with this old, dusty box of photos I found in my grandpa’s attic.
I started by just sorting through them, you know, trying to put faces to names, figure out who was who. Most of them were from his time in Oklahoma back in – you guessed it – 2009. He was working on some kind of construction project, looked like a pipeline or something. Lots of pictures of him and his crew, covered in dirt, grinning at the camera.
Then I got this idea: I’d scan all the photos, maybe make a little digital album for the family. Seemed simple enough, right?
The Scanning Saga
First, I dusted off my old scanner – the one I hadn’t touched since college. Hooked it up to my laptop, and… nothing. Of course. Drivers were outdated, software wouldn’t recognize it. So, I spent a good hour just getting the damn thing to work. Finally, I managed to get it running.
I did the configuration with an old tutorial that my friend sended me some time ago, I remember that he told that I must take in count that kind of old scanner.
- Resolution: 300 DPI, because these are not high-resolution images.
- I had to clean the glass: The images will look better.
- Save the images as JPG.
Then came the actual scanning. One by one, I fed the photos into the scanner. It was slow, tedious work. Each photo took a couple of minutes. And with each scan, I found myself getting more and more curious about what my grandpa was actually doing out there in Oklahoma.
I started looking closely at the backgrounds of the photos. I noticed some company logos on the trucks, some landmarks I didn’t recognize. I Googled a few things, just to see what would pop up.
Down the Rabbit Hole
Turns out, the company he was working for was involved in some big natural gas pipeline project. I found some old news articles about it, even a few blog posts from people who lived in the area at the time. I started piecing together a timeline of the project, matching it up with the dates on the photos.
It was like I was uncovering this whole little history, just from a box of old photos. I ended up spending days on this, scanning, researching, organizing. I even tracked down a couple of my grandpa’s old coworkers, just from names I saw in the photos. They were happy to chat, shared some stories about their time on the project. I was really grateful.
Putting It All Together
Finally, I had all the photos scanned and organized. I created a simple digital slideshow, added some captions with the information I’d gathered. Nothing fancy, just a way to preserve the memories and share them with my family.
I showed it to my mom, and she was blown away. She remembered some of the stories my grandpa used to tell, but seeing the photos and the context I’d added brought it all back to life. It was a really cool feeling, like I’d connected with a part of my family history that I hadn’t really known before.
So, yeah, “Oklahoma 2009”. It started with a dusty box and ended up being a pretty rewarding little project. It wasn’t about the technical stuff, really. It was about the stories, the people, and the history behind those old photos.
