Mystery Picture 091121

This picture says Perry Tippet; at least, that's what I think it says.


Who is Perry Tippet and where is he going?

UPDATE

Ellen tells us a bit about Perry's background.

Perry Tippet was another roommate of Grandpa Stutz at BYU. He and Grandpa and Grandma were very good friends. Perry was like a big brother to Grandma (Mildred) because they were both from Delta. He kind of watched out for her while she was at BYU. Howard and Art LaBaron and Perry Tippit were all roommates together.

Thanks, Ellen! Perry sounds like a great guy. I wonder where he was going?

Andrew guesses that, "Perhaps he is going on a mission?" Perhaps.

School Portrait - Shari

We previously featured school portraits of Lori, Kent, Craig, Tom, Joe, Boyd/Sam, and Ellen, as well as some non-school portraits of Grandpa and Priscilla. Today, on her birthday (happy birthday, little sister!), we have school portraits of Shari through the years. As with all the school portraits, the known information about each picture is included, and we attempted to put them in chronological order. You are invited to let us know where we got the order wrong or to provide any additional details about these portraits.

Unknown


Unknown


Unknown


Unknown


Unknown


Unknown


1989 (Billings, Montana)


Unknown

Mystery Picture 091119

This picture, developed in September 1966, shows Bess Hess and Grandma in Zurich, Switzerland.


Who are Bess Hess? And, what were they doing in Switzerland?

UPDATE

Ellen comments and provides some context for this picture.

Bess Hess' husband, Wilford, taught at BYU in the botany department with Grandpa. On a trip that Grandpa took to Switzerland, Mom was able to fly over and join him for the summer. Bess and her husband were also in Switzerland going to school. They had a nice visit together.

Thanks, Ellen!

Mystery Picture 091118

We are calling this a mystery picture group photo, even though the group is really small. The previous group photo was apparently easy, even though we thought it would be difficult, so we are trying the opposite approach with this one. Three people, all looking at the camera, with the deceptive label on the picture, "Howard from the Triumphrati", whatever that means.


We are not going to number the people in this picture. Just describe who everyone is -- en ingles, por favor -- and we will sort it out.

Of course, you can also tell us who is in the impossible-to-identify mystery group picture, but that looks like a lost cause.

UPDATE

Andrew writes in the comments:

The one on the top is Aunt Eleanor. The one on the left reminds me a little of Aunt Gladys O., perhaps a sister or something. The one on the right is, of course, the unidentified lady from the two military photos as well as two or three other ones.

Thanks, Andrew! Perhaps we will sort these out eventually.

Andrew poked around some more and adds the following:

I heard from Gail Stutz Smith that the woman on the left is her Aunt Margaret Weston, so I did guess right.

Thanks again, Andrew! You certainly have a knack for investigative work. Is Margaret Weston -- or Gail, for that matter -- in any of the other pictures?

School Portrait - Ellen

As fate would have it, in addition to Sarah entering the MTC for her mission, today is also the day her mom, Ellen, has her school portraits posted on GAP.

We previously featured school portraits of Lori, Kent, Craig, Tom, Joe, and Boyd/Sam, as well as some non-school portraits of Grandpa and Priscilla. With Ellen, as with all the school portraits, the known information about each picture is included, and we attempted to put them in chronological order. You are invited to let us know where we got the order wrong or to provide any additional details about these portraits.

Unknown


1963 - Third grade


Unknown


Unknown


Unknown


Unknown


Unknown


Send in your current (or past) school portraits, and we will feature them on GAP.

John's Missionary Farewell

I forgot to include these in the previous post, but GAP also has pictures from John's missionary farewell.


I am guessing these are from February 1977, because that was when the slides were developed, but I do not know the details. Does anyone have a good mission story to share (about John or anyone else)?

Karla recently posted some pictures of her husband, Brian, on his mission to Dearborn, Michigan, but omitted the details of just what, exactly, is going on with the dolls in the first picture.

On a Mission....

Sarah entered the MTC today to prepare for her mission to Santiago, Chile. I am sure her farewell party was fun, and I wish I could have attended. From her Facebook postings, though, it sounds like she was all set to go -- frozen yoghurt eaten, fish gutted, mission boots purchased, mission pictures taken, and "I got my mission suitcase to close! Miracles really do happen to missionaries!" All the best, Sarah!

Speaking of mission pictures and farewell parties, GAP has a few mementos from previous missionaries de la familia (just helping you practice, Sarah), and now is the perfect time to share them. These things are pretty self-explanatory, so I will just post them for your enjoyment.


Perhaps GAP will receive a copy of Sarah's farewell picture to post, too?

UPDATE

Anonymous (Cathy, is that you?) writes in the comments:

What handsome men! These are great, thanks for sharing these with us Robbie! Congrats to Sarah also. You have become such a wonderful young lady! Have a blast!

Our sentiment exactly.

Mystery Picture 091104 - Revisited

After we posted the earlier pictures at "Turtle Hills" John wrote in the comments, "There are some other pictures in this series taken to give the impression that we were holding the moon in our hands." Naturally, we wanted to find one of the holding-the-moon pictures. The slides John recently sent include one of them!


Nice memory, John, and thanks for sending in the slides!

Mystery Picture Review

Instead of posting a mystery picture today, we are instead asking for help identifying past mystery pictures about which we know very little or nothing. Click on the "Mystery Picture" label below this post to see all mystery picture posts, and try to help GAP out with the identification of these mystery pictures. There are quite a few that need information.

Scanning Slides - The Scanning Process

It has been a while since I discussed archiving techniques, but John recently sent in his slides, which I have been working through, and it got me thinking about documenting the process. Should anyone contemplate scanning slides, a checklist of steps might be useful. If for no other reason, this may help gauge the amount of time necessary for the task.

Here are the steps I take with slides, which I am scanning using my Nikon Coolscan V, a dedicated 35 mm film/slide scanner that scans only one slide or filmstrip at a time.

1. Remove all slides from their storage sheets.
   
2. Sort slides by decade and then year.
3. Sort the earliest year of slides by the date the slide was developed, grouping the different rolls of film (using the information printed on the slide frame) in chronological order.
4. Clean the first slide (I use a feather duster).
5. Scan the slide. This simplicity of this step is a bit deceptive, because with all the image enhancement I use (to eliminate some dust and scratches, restore color, and minimize film grain) scanning time takes 4-5 minutes per slide. This results in an image just under 23 megapixels per slide, with a file size (in TIFF format) that is just over 65 megabytes.
6. Repeat scanning for all slides.
7. Rename all files to reflect the fancy pants file naming system that incorporates the information from the slide frame.
8. Return all slides to their storage sheets.

And that's it for the scanning! For John's 138 slides, scanning will take about 10.5 hours and result in files occupying about 9 gigabytes of hard drive space; additional time is needed for the other non-scanning tasks. Some of these tasks can be accomplished will the previous slide is being scanned. You have been warned.

But, that's not the end of the image preparation! These files are too unwieldy, so I batch convert them in Photoshop Elements 5 from TIFF format to PNG format. This cuts many file sizes in about half without losing any information or degrading the quality. JPEG format can degrade an image but has a much smaller file size, so I typically use it only for distributing final versions of images.

I generally batch convert to several different sizes and formats for each image -- 100% size PNG image (for archiving as the "original"), 50% size PNG image (for further editing), 50% size JPEG (for distribution), and 10% size JPEG (as the "thumbnail" for quick viewing). I use the 50% size PNG image as the original for the JPEG images if I have edited the PNG image. These four versions of each image together often take up 40-50 megabytes, which, while substantial, is notably less than the original TIFF image. My terabyte hard drive has plenty of room (for now!) for all these images.

I have discussed image editing a bit in other posts, and likely will discuss it more in the future, but for now the above is the process I use for scanning slides. Whew!

Mystery Picture 091010 - Revisited

In the October 10 mystery picture Grandma was standing in front of Chief Mountain; we were left wondering when the picture was taken. Then John comes along with the slides he sent and -- what do you know? -- he has the original slide!


Click on the image for a bigger-than-usual picture. As you can see, the grass is browner in this scan from a slide than in the previous scan from a print. Now it looks right for a picture taken about July 1978, which is when this slide was developed. Mystery solved!

Found On The Interwebs - Prominent People

Apparently Grandma and Grandpa are in the book "Prominent Men and Women of Provo 1983". I am not sure how I know this, but it was on the interwebs somewhere. I am sort of curious about what the book says, but my neighborhood library in Virginia does not have it in their holdings.



Although no subsequent versions were produced, this out-of-print-since-about-1983 book is occasionally available on ebay. Let me know when you buy it and and can tell me what it says about Grandma and Grandpa.

I do not know anything about the editor, a self-proclaimed nichepreneur, but I do wonder (OK, not really) how he became a specialist in the diversity of topics on which he publishes.

(To those of you wondering why I bothered to post this, I was hoping to work in an reference to Promontory, but it didn't happen. I decided not to waste the few minutes of my life I spent writing this, trying to figure out a pun. This is, without a doubt, the worst post yet in GAP. Sorry!)

Mystery Picture 091116

The mystery picture group photos have had some pretty dramatic swings in response lately. The previous picture took less than 24 hours for everyone to be identified. The picture before that sat for a month with no responses. Which I thought was unusual, given that you could see everyone and the picture was less than 20 years old, but whatever. (You can still contribute the names, though!)

This one is on the difficult side because it is quite oldish (developed in July 1967) and because not a single person -- not one! -- is looking at the camera. To ramp up the difficulty level, the trademark GAP gold lettering appears to be the worst possible color for numbering the people in the picture. C'est la vie, as they say in a part of Canada far, far away from where the Stutz family is from.



As always, the first picture can be clicked on to view a much larger image. The second, numbered picture can be clicked on to view a somewhat larger image. If you leave comments with the names of the people, I will fill in the numbered list as people are identified.

I am going rogue with the rules for this one, though, since I think some people may be impossible to identify. Give me four names -- any four names -- identifying people in this group shot, and we'll call it good.

1 - Aunt Gladys O. (Rowan's)
2 - Probably one of Aunt Verena's grandkids.
3 - Aunt Verena
4 - Probably my brother Mark. He was born Mar. 1967.
5 - Fern
6 - Wendy Carlson?
7 - Aunt Gladys D. (Cliff's)
8 - Uncle Clifford

UPDATE

Oh, man! I can't believe it. Andrew comes through (in less than 6 hours!) with name suggestions for each and every person, and anonymous and anonymous' mom confirm at least five of them! Ding, ding, ding. Mission accomplished. Thanks Andrew, anonymous, and anonymous' mom!

Non-Mystery Picture 091116

As with the earlier portraits of Grandpa, this portrait may or may not be a school portrait -- I'm not particularly good at identifying these things. In any event, it is a glamorous portrait of Priscilla, the only one I have. It seems like a good day to run it.



Happy birthday, Priscilla!

Non-Mystery Picture 091115

While scanning John's slides, I came across a wonderful birthday picture that I want to post on Grandma's birthday. It shows John, Susan, and Ellen on John's 10th birthday in Beirut, Lebanon. It was developed in February 1968, a couple of months after John's birthday.



There is really not much more to add about this picture, although I do wonder what a 10 year old boy gets for his birthday in Lebanon.