More Hot Rod Racing in Detroit area c. 1953
As promised to many of our newest fans, here are the remaining three 8mm color films of automobile racing in the Detroit area, c. 1953.
These are some of the films we digitized for Mason Bright, a Detroit native, former NASCAR driver and longtime member of the Motor City Modified Auto Club. Formed in 1948, the MMAC started as a conglomeration of hot rod enthusiasts who used to gather at Detroit’s Northwestern Highway and (we think) Ypsilanti’s Willow Run Airport to race their cars.
Besides plenty of racing action, you get glimpses trophies, close-ups of members – and even a leaderboard or two. If you have any information to add, please leave it in the comments section below or at the YouTube video page.
Because these films were digitized in HD, we highly recommend adjusting the settings accordingly and playing them full screen.
This film was digitized by Priceless Photo Preservation, an Ann Arbor firm of U-M trained archivists devoted to helping families in southeast and west Michigan, as well as northwest Ohio, preserve and digitize their most precious memories. We work with slides, photos, photo albums, letters, videos and films.
We are now located at 122 South Main Street Suite 110 C inside downtown Ann Arbor’s historic Goodyear Building. We are open 10-6 p.m. Monday-Friday and weekends by appointment.
Hot Rod Racing in the Detroit area c. 1953: Rare 8mm Film
First of all, we want to thank all of the new fans of Priceless Photo Preservation. The house-moving video featured on AnnArbor.com this week got more than 5,000 views in three days – and allowed us at Priceless Photo Preservation to grab a handful of new PPP Facebook fans to put us over the magical 100 threshold. We are both thankful and humbled by this show of appreciation for all the important work we do as an Ann Arbor partnership of professional archivists.
As we promised to many of our newest fans, we plan to soon show a few of the more interesting items we have preserved and converted over the last few months. The first is this remarkable 8mm color film of automobile racing in the Detroit area, c. 1953.
This is one of several films we digitized for Mason Bright, a Detroit native, former NASCAR driver and longtime member of the Motor City Modified Auto Club. Formed in 1948, the MMAC started as a conglomeration of hot rod enthusiasts who used to gather at Detroit’s Northwestern Highway and (we think) Ypsilanti’s Willow Run Airport to race their cars.
This is one of four of Bright’s MMAC films we plan to post in the coming days. Besides plenty of racing action, we will see trophies, close-ups of members – and even a leaderboard or two. If you have any information to add, please leave it in the comments section below or at the YouTube video page.
This film was digitized by Priceless Photo Preservation, an Ann Arbor firm of U-M trained archivists devoted to helping families in southeast and west Michigan, as well as northwest Ohio, preserve and digitize their most precious memories. We work with slides, photos, photo albums, letters, videos and films.
We are now located at 122 South Main Street Suite 110 C inside downtown Ann Arbor’s historic Goodyear Building. We are open 10-6 p.m. Monday-Friday and weekends by appointment.
House Move Article on Ann Arbor.com today
We just wanted to let everyone know that Janet Miller of Ann Arbor.com did a great job capturing the momentousness of the 1987 house move of two mammoth 19th century houses from South Main Street to Southeast Ann Arbor, a video we digitized for Dr. Edward “Lev” Linkner a few months ago.
You’ve read our take on the proceedings here, but we thought you might enjoy reading the featured article authored by Ms. Miller, an excellent reporter and a former Ann Arbor News colleague of Priceless Photo Preservation founding partner Rob Hoffman.
Spring is a great time to visit downtown Ann Arbor. And next week, we at Priceless Photo Preservation are providing an extra reason to go downtown to enjoy all of its wonderful shops, restaurants and entertainment options.
From 9-11 a.m., the professional archivists at Priceless Photo Preservation will be holding one of our occasional workshops aimed at educating people about how to best preserve their most precious family mementos: Photos, scrapbooks, slides, home videos and movies.
The workshop, titled “Top Ten Preservation Mistakes… and How to Avoid Them,” will take place at Downtown Home and Garden, 210 South Ashley – a little more than a block away from PPP’s new office at 122 South Main St.. Suite 110C.
The workshop is free and is designed to be interactive. Feel free to bring some of the family materials you have questions about – and we will do everything we can to answer questions about them, such as how to best preserve them, make them more available to other family members or enhance their value as key pieces of family history.
We will also have a TV showing the 1939 color movie of downtown Ann Arbor that we preserved and digitized last year for Larry Goetz of Goetzcraft Printers. Titled “We’re In the Movies,” the 70-minute 16mm silent film includes a rare look at the way Ann Arbor used to be more than 70 years ago.
The day will also feature tours by Downtown Home and Garden Mark Hodesh of his historic building, which was built more than a century ago.
All of the events are free and no pre-registration is required. We hope to see you there!
When Ann Arbor Had A Daily Newspaper…
Remember the good old days?
As in the days when the city of Ann Arbor had a daily newspaper ?
Okay, so they weren’t so old. After all, it was only a few years ago that the Ann Arbor News ceased operations and was replaced by the online news site, AnnArbor.com.
For those nostalgic for the days of traditional journalism (most notably PPP’s founding partner Rob Hoffman, who worked as a reporter at the News from 1999-2007), we have a treat. Recently, we digitized some VHS tapes that included these two promotional videos for the newspaper that were shot in approximately 1986 and 1992.
We are posting them below so everyone can enjoy them.
More Slide Scanning, the Priceless Photo Preservation Way
It’s been a while since we discussed this topic. But we think it’s worth re-exploring.
If you want your slides digitized and preserved right, come to Priceless Photo Preservation at 122 South Main St., Suite 110 C in downtown Ann Arbor.
Our special scanners do an extraordinary job of capturing all the details and rich colors of your family’s long history.
Not only do we scan slides at up to 2400 DPI (a resolution easily good enough for, say, a large poster you could frame), but we will color-correct them, remove dust and other imperfections and embed information such as date stamps and captions so that they are forever linked to the image.
Because we are protective of our clients’ privacy, we haven’t posted many examples of our scanning work.
Until now.
The folks at the Ann Arbor Kiwanis Thrift Sale, which takes place every Saturday morning from 9 a.m.-noon at 1st and Washington, gave us some slides to scan that had been anonymously donated a while ago. What’s more, these “found” images are some if the best kind of slides that benefit from digitization: Red framed Kodachrome slides from 1952-1955, when Kodak’s slide-developing techniques – arguably – were at their peak.
We have posted a few examples below so you can get an idea of how the process of digitization can make pictures taken 60 years ago seem as if they were snapped yesterday. What’s also clear is how much detail our scanners capture. For example, in the Christmas picture, you can see that one of the gifts under the tree is a 1953 Jackie Gleason album (his debut) called For Lovers Only.
We also have embedded a slide show to display all of the nearly two dozen slides we scanned.
Priceless Photo Preservation – Now Open at 122 South Main Street Suite 110 C, Downtown Ann Arbor
At Priceless Photo Preservation, we know how important it is to find people you can trust to preserve, restore and digitize your most precious possessions: Your scrapbooks, photos, slides, home movies 
and videos.
That’s why we are pleased to announce that we have opened an office inside the historic Goodyear Building in the heart of downtown Ann Arbor, two doors down from the Crazy Wisdom bookstore and between Washington and Huron streets. We are on the first floor in the back of the building, which used to house one of the city’s busiest department stores and has been lovingly restored by developer Ed Shaffran.
While we will continue to offer our hallmark pick-up and drop-off service, we wanted to give our customers a chance to come to us directly with their preservation needs. We will be open from 10 a.m.-6 p.m Monday through Friday and by appointment on weekends.
The 700-foot square office includes a private room where we can meet with our clients to discuss their needs and show the examples of our work. Plus, a wall that displays all the different analog equipment we employ to help us digitize your memories – or, in some cases, lend out if you are seeking to discover what exactly is on that mysterious home video or how many of your grandfather’s 10,000 slides are worth preserving.
Furthermore, The new physical location will allow customers to “window shop” our many services, come to us with small jobs that we can perform quickly and get face-to-face answers about their preservation needs. Our facilities also gives up the space to offer some additional services, such as recording audio or video oral histories of family members.
We are really excited about this latest step in our rapidly growing company’s development.
And we hope you will be too.
But, just in case this wasn’t enough, we’re making things a little more exciting for our clients and friends with a limited-time offer.
On our Facebook page, we have uploaded a coupon that you can redeem at specified hours during the week of March 25-29. It is good for up to FIVE FREE SCANS of photos, slides and negatives that get saved to a flash drive you supply. (The cost is $5 if we have to save it to one of our own storage CDs).
This offer gets even better if you’re an existing customer or a PPP Facebook fan. Upon request, we will send you a special coupon good for up to 11 FREE SCANS during the same period.
In the meantime, feel free to stop in and say hello. We look forward to doing an even better job of helping local families preserve and protect their most precious possessions.
