Dear photograph - Dear me!

I was recently listening to Lisa Louise Cooke's podcast, Genealogy Gems, and she mentioned this nifty idea called "Dear Photograph". If you're interested in the past, change, families or photographs, you've got to have a look at this site. It's a very low tech way of mixing the past and the present in one easy click of your camera. All you need is:

1. an old photograph
2. a camera
3. a place (get yourself to the place where the original photograph was taken)

If it sounds a bit weird, the best way to understand this technique is to see a few examples. Here is one example of my own Dear Photograph attempts. Here are my grandparents on a day out, taken at Central Station Sydney in the 1930s or 1940s, against a background of a recently snapped Central Station in 2011:

(Notice the stylish coats - you're looking at a tailor and a tailoress walking arm-in-arm.)

Here are a couple of my favourites from the Dear Photograph site:

http://dearphotograph.com/post/11243748545/dear-photograph-i-miss-those-days-of-running-free

and

http://dearphotograph.com/post/8311735731/dear-photograph-if-i-could-turn-the-corner-in

and

http://dearphotograph.com/post/8928430180/dear-photograph-those-were-the-days-when-mom

I love this technique and think it would be a great way to get children to think about the real link between the past and present. It's also a great way to link the history of your family with the present. Happy snapping ...