Photo courtesy of Homestead Aerial Photos Ltd.
Are you looking for archival photos of your family, farm, business, country school, church or town? Well if so, you’re in luck.
Discover photos you never knew existed when Homestead Aerial Photos Ltd. comes to the LloydMall on April 5-6 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Homestead Aerial is based out of Edmonton and owned by Kim Bessette and his wife, Eileen Deringer. The company has been around for quite some time and has a library of over 1.5 million historical images dating back to the 1950s.
“The library began in 1953 and was based out of Edmonton,” said Bessette.
“When we took over the library in the early ‘90s it covered all the provinces in western Canada, so pretty much every farm. These photos were taken at very low altitudes and completely shot on spec. You get a lot of great fly-by detail of the farm yard because there were a lot fewer restrictions for flying back then.”
Bessette explained how over the years Homestead Aerial has helped many people find a piece of family history they might not have known existed.
“That’s what we’ll be doing when we come to Lloyd on April 5 and 6. We’ll be set up in the LloydMall empty space by Shoppers Drug Mart,” he said.
Homestead Aerial Photo will also be set up at the Lashburn Community Hall from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on April 3 as well as at the C.E. Wing United Church in Maidstone from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on April 4.
“All people have to do is stop in with their land location. If they don’t know the legal land location, giving us the distance and directions from the nearest town will help, or just show us on our map where they think the farm is,” said Bessette.
“We’ll give them a pack of proofs and they can flip through them and identify the yard. Some of the photos have the original owner’s name on them, some don’t, so they just need to identify the correct farm.”
Bessette also noted the library of images is especially interesting for people who don’t have contact with the old family farm anymore.
“These photos are snapshots in time and allow people to tell their family history,” he said, adding the fact photos are printed by hand using the original negatives.
“We still use a darkroom and print the photos from old black and white negatives, so everything is done by hand and the details are amazing because the negatives are high definition,” he said.
“As we continue on, we’re digitizing our entire library because the negatives only last so long, so we’re preserving them that way. Although it takes forever to do, the advantage with digitizing the negatives is we’re able to edit out the imperfections or scratches on them.”
Although not done on spec anymore, Bessette noted Homestead Aerial continues to shoot photos today by appointment, and all shoots are custom these days.
