Old Photos: New Life

I have always loved photography.  Even as a teenager, when my late father gave me my first film camera, I have been intrigued by capturing forever the places I have visited.  I received my first digital camera in 2008 as a 5-year anniversary present at my former employer, which has made my interest in photography much more accessible (not to mention cheaper) than my previous hobby as a photographer using film.  As a theatre publicity major, which granted me my Bachelor of Arts degree, I used film photography to capture the candid moments that made my university's productions so great, but I believe I could have been much more affective using a digital medium to create my publicity photos. 

Anyway, the great thing about today's technology is, even if you have only used film photography as your main method of expression, your photos can be adapted to the digital world.  Last Christmas, I treated myself to a printer/scanner/copier from Kodak, and it was truly one of the best purchases I've ever made.  I have been been able to scan the photos I took using a film camera and turn them into digital photos, even improving them using Photoshop Elements. 

Back in 2004, for my 30th birthday, my mom and I stared a tradition of vacationing to a different city every year.  The first stop we made was Las Vegas, which was a place my mom had been twice already (once to see Frank Sinatra with my aunt) but was a first-time treat for me.  The two photos above and five below were taken from that trip:

The Belagio hotel

The New York, NY hotel

The Paris hotel

Inside the Venitian hotel

Our next trip, a year later to Cleveland, OH, was specifically for me to see the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame.  As a rock-and-roll scholar, I was excited to see the home of many historical artifacts, but the high point was a video they show of all of the inductees to the hall-of-fame year by year.  Another high point was the fact that I visited the year that my favorite band, U2, was inducted.  Outside the Rock-and-Roll Hall of fame was this interesting sculputre of a stamp that read "Free" that I had to take a picture of:

The following year, to continue our rock-and-roll tradition, we visited Memphis, TN, the birthplace of the blues.  I thought it was very interesting to see all of the different homages to the blues and rock-and-roll, but the highlight was visiting Graceland.  The bad part was, you couldn't take pictures of the inside of Graceland without using a flash, so I used my "free" digital camera to take those pictures, and the only way I could print them at the time was at work on plain paper, which didn't turn out so well.  Luckily, I also bought a point-and-shoot disposable camera once we arrived in Memphis, so I was able to take the photos posted below:

Long before I took on photography as a hobby, my parents treated me to a visit to Orlando, Florida a year after I endured a difficult back surgery to install titanium rods in my back for scoliosis.  I took the photos below at Cape Canaveral, a side trip we took after visiting Disneyworld. 

My father died in 2010 and my mom and I don't have the financial resources to travel as much as we used to, but I'm thrilled to have these photos to remind me of the great trips we took.  And I'm so grateful technology as enabled me to revisit these places and make them even better.