Archivists in action, with film, slides

and photos, are Rob Hoffman, Hanna

Stelman and Eric Hansen.

Historical Library, the university's
Preservation and Conservation Lab,
Grand Valley State University, the
National Baseball Hall of Fame and the
Smithsonian Institution.
"I spent 10 weeks at the Hall of Fame
in Cooperstown, N.Y., processing photos
and film, and a week at the Smithsonian
in Washington, D.C., doing audio con-
version," said Hoffman.

Preserving The Past

Ann Arbor photo firm captures memories for the digital age.

Bill Carroll
Contributing Writer

Ann Arbor

A

lmost everyone has them. Old
8mm or 16mm home movies
stashed away in potato chip
cans. Old photos, slides and VHS videos
gathering dust in closets, basements and
garages. People either forget about them
or feel it's just too much trouble to look
for them, haul them out and try to show
them on an old screen.
A company in Ann Arbor has come to
the rescue and, along the way, is helping
to bring the digital age to the Detroit
area. Priceless Photo Preservation, a
partnership of three professional archi-
vists, offers a wide variety of services to
help people ensure the long-term sur-
vival and availability of some of their
most precious possessions.
"Many of us have old movies and
photos that are not being taken care
of properly and, until recently, people
didn't have a away to make sure these
items would survive and not just dete-
riorate," said Rob Hoffman, founder and
CEO of Priceless Photo Preservation,
who says he's a 16th-generation Jewish
American, directly descended from the
first group of Jews to land in the New

72

June 14 s 2012

World in 1654.
His partners and fellow University of
Michigan graduates are Eric Hansen and
Hanna Stelman, both also Ann Arbor
residents. The three even perform local
seminars on how to preserve film and
photos.

Adding Narration And Music
The company relies on various methods
to digitize images and preserve personal
artifacts; does power scanning of pho-
tos in old albums; provides retention
of metadata (attaching story captions
and descriptions to photos); and can
even incorporate narration from family
members and music into movies that
the firm converts with its state-of-the-
art equipment.
"We can organize analog photos
according to archival standards, create
online photo and video-sharing family
archives, and produce unique family
heirlooms from the digitized material;
this includes commemorative books,
DVD slide shows and fully loaded digital
photo frames," Hoffman said.
So far, the company has taken on
such projects as scenes from two of the
oldest Jewish-owned stores in Arbor;
a 1939 full-color movie of downtown
Ann Arbor; footage of a University of
Michigan football game from the 1930s;

some film of the famous TET offensive
in the Vietnam War; and the personal
scrapbook of a World War II Tuskegee
airman.
These are among the 40 to 50 pro-
jects developed by Priceless Photo
Preservation since it was launched last
fall in Hoffman's home.
"I got involved in this because I was
intrigued by the many modern things
that can be done to preserve history,"
he explained. "Preservation of family
history is especially intrinsic to Jewish
culture. It's important to not forget the
past."

Former Newsman
A New York native, Hoffman, 47, came
to Michigan in 1999 to join the staff of
the former Ann Arbor News after get-
ting a journalism degree from Syracuse
University. He then obtained a master's
in journalism from U-M. "But I became
fascinated by personal archiving and
the new wave of social media:' he said.
He got another master's, this time in
archives and records management from
U-M, and plunged into the digital archi-
val business.
Hansen is a writing instructor, origi-
nally from Grand Rapids, and Stelman
is from the Flint area. Collectively, the
three have worked at U-M's Bentley

Film Brings Back Memories
The members of two old-time Ann Arbor
Jewish families were "extremely excited" to
have seen their fathers and grandfathers
in motion and in full color in the 1939
film viewed by many in the Ann Arbor
community. The stores were Fiegel's Men's
Clothing and Nagler's Furs.
Barbara Nagler Wasylenki, now of New
Mexico, was "deeply moved" to view her
father, Isaac Nagler, who founded the store
in 1936 and died in 1967. (Both stores
have since closed.)
Susan Pearlman of Ann Arbor felt
the same way about Priceless Photo
Preservation's restoration of film shot
by her grandfather of the U-M foot-
ball game played in the mid-1930s at
Michigan's stadium.
"It's truly amazing to see a Michigan
football game played way back," she
said.
After Susan Wright, a current Ann
Arbor businesswoman, had the com-
pany digitize her old projector slides,
she praised "these new processes that
really make everything very visible. I'm
so happy about having them done."
Hoffman stresses that his firm offers
the security of pick-up and drop-
off service in southeast and central
Michigan.
"People can have the work done by
local professionals rather than hand
it in to a retail store where it might be
shipped off to India or the Philippines
to be completed — possibly many
weeks later:' he said. "We're committed
to a quick turnaround?'
Hoffman keeps costs down as much
as possible, which, he points out, trans-
lates into lower prices and savings for
customers. "We purposely don't post
prices ahead of time because we want to
find out first exactly what the customer
wants," he explained. "But this is a very
labor-intensive business, and we put in
a fair amount of time on each project?'
Hoffman is pinning the success of the
business on the fact that "society is now
at a digital analog crossroads:' he said,
"and new technology is here to get the
job done?" E