2011

Last month, my colleague and Director of Engineering, Kevin Marsh, wrote a post giving a broad overview of how Vintage Aerial uses technology to preserve history. As Director of Archive Development, I have the privilege of working with the ornate, historic film in our vault and the ground-breaking software that Kevin has developed. While I could go on and on about the details of this work, this post will focus primarily on the G.I.S. (Geographical Information Systems) aspect of my job.

Years ago when a pilot would go up to take photos, he would bring a simple county map with him. While flying and taking photos, he would also trace his flight path on these maps and mark the spot each time he changed a roll of film. Let me remind you, he did this all while flying!

UPDATE. We have updated this post to reveal the location of our Mystery Monday Photo.

Bradford Farmers Cooperative. Photo from 1984, Franklin County, Iowa. Map

UPDATE. We have updated this post to reveal the location of our Mystery Monday Photo

Our photo this week was of Storybook Ranch in Collin County, TX. – taken in 1991. (Map)

Over the past few years, I’ve been closely tracking how the genealogy industry not just uses technology, but more importantly how it approaches and looks at technology. It is one thing to use a technology such as digital scanning; it is another thing to seek out, investigate and evaluate new technologies such as QR Codes or geo-location and see if they are a good “fit” with genealogy and family history.

Vision is the key to understanding what technologies could be embraced by those in the genealogy community. No amount of marketing or “crowdsourcing” the latest catch phrase will mean adoption by genealogists and family historians. But those companies and individuals with a keen vision and the ability to swoop in for a “close-up” view are able to quickly evaluate and understand what may well be “the next great technology” for the genealogy industry.

Just like an aerial photographer, it all depends on your altimeter reading and whether or not you are willing to risk flying in for a closer look at what technologies are available.

A Tech Fly-by

The genealogy industry has been slow to adopt and adapt to technology in general, as was discussed by many attendees at the RootsTech 2011 conference in Salt Lake City, Utah in mid-February. Most genealogists have some knowledge of social media, mobile or smart phone applications, digitization and similar newer technologies. However, much of that knowledge has been gleaned from simply skimming the surface or relying on information from a variety of sources including other genealogists. Such a quick “fly-by” view presents risks in how the technology is viewed:

UPDATE. We have updated this post to reveal the location of our Mystery Monday Photo

The rural built-environment is fast disappearing. Meanwhile, small communities are losing more than window panes and rafters.

Rural America, at least in the Midwest, has lost a large piece of its history and culture that made the built landscape of its farmlands and towns special. That’s what 1900 miles of mostly backroads driving last fall through Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, and Ohio suggests to me.

I suspect relatively few people recognize what has disappeared building by building over the past two or three generations. The loss is disheartening, certainly a sign of changes in agriculture and small-town manufacturing that have quietly sapped our nation’s rural communities.

Anyone who follows rural America recognizes the importance of out migration, the movement of so many people to cities. Perhaps out migration is a testimony that life on farms and in rural towns wasn’t all that great. If so, it challenges our nostalgic myths of agrarianism and the goodness of community. Then again, maybe people had to leave, pushed and pulled to urban areas by larger and smaller economic, social, and political forces.

The great rural outmigration is not only about the loss of human souls whose talents and energy went someplace else. While some rural areas may have done all right economically in the wake of population decline, they - and the nation - have lost part of their cultural soul. This soul was expressed in vernacular architecture, the homes and buildings of men and women and their families who worked the land and built rural villages and towns. Change has taken part of our history.

UPDATE: We have revealed the location of our mystery photo at WhatWasThere.

This week’s photo is from McSherrytown, PA, taken in 1966.

Another week, another Mystery Monday! Here is the entry for this week. Read the guidelines below, then comment and be sure to include the Google Maps link.

This week’s photo is Heini’s Cheese Chalet in Berlin, OH. “Google Maps Thank you to Annis & Brad for your correct guesses. We will be in touch. Make sure to check back for next week’s Mystery Monday!

Technology and History are almost contradictory. Often we hear news stories of a new technology coming along and eradicating the past. We certainly recognize the theme in the story of our photographic collection. Modern “progress” in the form of shopping malls, corporate farms, and urban sprawl are encroaching on rural America as many of us remember it. But the beauty of Vintage Aerial’s product and service is that today’s advanced digital imaging, GIS, and web technology are combining to preserve the past.

Digital Imaging

At the heart of our collection are the photographs. But the photos shot from the 1960s to even the late 1990s were shot on (black and white) film, and live in a protected vault of film canisters.

We’re scanning and digitizing some 700,000 rolls of this film. Each image is stored as a lossless-compressed TIFF file that is around 6 megabytes. When we’re finished scanning, the the total collection will take up about 150 terabytes.

Last week’s Mystery Monday photo contest was relatively easy. We wanted to get some interest by putting out a well known photo. But, from now on they will be a bit more “Mysterious.” With that here is the Mystery Monday entry for this week! Read the guidelines below, then comment and make sure to include the Google Maps link!

This week we rolled out our first ever Mystery Monday Photo and we got a very quick response. Our winner this week is Delana Gilmore.

Check back Monday for the next Mystery Photo contest. We are going to make it a bit harder this time!

This week’s photo was: Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello:

1983 in Albemarle County, Virginia. Google Maps

Welcome to the first installment of “Mystery Monday!” Our photo archive contains 25 million aerial photos covering nearly a 50 year time span. Within the archive are some ordinary, some famous, and some more mysterious photos. This blog series will be used to post a “Mystery” Photo once a week and see if our readers can identify it. So, with that, here is this week’s photo.

Most people can identify the subject in our photo above. While this image helps show the vastness of our photo archive, not all of our images are as recognizable. So, starting Monday we will be rolling out a new contest called “Mystery Monday.” Here are the details…

Yesterday one of our veteran librarians, Tom Wolff, got a wonderful gift in the mail from a grateful customer. Heidi Fahrenbacher wrote about the customer service she got from Tom on her blog here .

When I got to the office today I made my standard tour of the sites I like to visit. Several Ag-related blogs I enjoy reading, a few news pages, and of course a few social media news sources. In today’s tour I came across this article that Mashable posted last night.

A few days ago a guy in Brooklyn posted a video about a new adventure he is in, all surrounding a roll of film. As I watched I was reminded, in a very distinct way, of the wonder that is held in a roll of film. Todd, in the video, seeing these images for the first time, is left to fill in the details. It is up to him to develop the stories and backstories of these images. And it made me realize, again, all that is captured in a single photo, a single roll.

Our archive has 700,000 rolls similar to this one in their mystery. All containing close to 40 images of peoples personal histories. What an amazing collection of stories and wonder. Ok, take a look at the video…

In the analog world of 50 years ago the Aerial Photography business had a simple goal, to capture a photographic memoir of a family farm to preserve it for the benefit of future generations. Simply put, to create an heirloom. This was a cottage industry, made up of Mom and Pop companies which would send airplanes into a county to photograph homes and farms without any advance assurance that anyone would want to see or buy them. A salesperson would go door-to-door showing the owners their pictures from aloft.

I have been in and around this industry for over 33 years. My family happens to have been the largest in the country starting in 1962. I quickly became one of the sales guys who saw the importance of preserving family history in this way and so I took to the road. The challenges were many; sometimes people were not home, or didn’t feel the product to be necessary or see the immediate or long-term value of it at all. However, many people wisely did invest in their personal histories and still highly value these photos decades later.  

When we came across this story from Sherrie we couldn’t help but share it on the blog. The photo is wonderful and the story really brings it to life. Thanks to Sherrie for sharing! This is why Vintage Aerial exists. Enjoy.

This land, located approximately 10 miles north of Ashburn, Georgia, off of highway 41, was first owned by J. H. Odom. Upon his death in 1943, his heirs were given property per his will. My grandmother Corrie Miles Odom Collins was his oldest daughter of 11 surviving children. She received 166.2 acres for the “sum of $5 and other valuable consideration” in Turner and Crisp County. This deed was signed on April 3, 1948. The land was used for farming and to grow cows and hogs and raised a family with a girl and 2 boys.

Where the tractor is in the picture was one acre that my grandmother sold to my father, Donald Gene Collins, for the sum of love and affection when he and my mother married in 1966. They bought a TINY single wide mobile home and lived there until 1976. I was born in 1968 and my brother was born in 1974. We lived here until we moved to Rebecca Georgia in 1976.