The "Picture Project"
Westernaires alumna Patty Pesce Sullenberger, among other alumni, kindly sent us some of her Westernaires pictures. Here's Patty and her horse, Tawny, performing a Spanish Walk during a parade in Central City, CO. Circa 1972.
Did you know that Westernaires has tens of thousands of pictures, slides, and films stored away in its archive rooms? The Alumni Association has been working these past years to scan these images into electronic format for future posterity. The images range from thrilling to outrageous to sentimental to downright comedic, and we love sharing them with you!
For each image, we’re doing our best to attach information (called “metadata” or “tags”) about the picture: names of people in the picture, a date (or year) that the picture was taken, the location, and any other useful information (team name, context, etc.).
Westernaires alumnus Bill Fisher sent us a few slides from the mid-1950s -- this one is of the Estes Park show. We can easily scan slides too, so please send those if you've go them.
Once each image is scanned into electronic format and tagged with information, it is then saved to multiple storage backups for safe keeping. Our plan is to eventually provide a computer kiosk in the Westernaires Museum to exhibit these pictures. This system would allow a user to search for pictures with specific subjects (e.g., “Cavalry” and “Stock Show” and “1985”). The user will then be able to see all of the picture results.
Westernaires alumna Judy Hudgins Kinyon generously sent us a boatload of great old Westernaires pictures, like this image of the beloved rental string horse, Smokey, circa early 1980s.
It’s a long and arduous process, but we feel it’s very important to ensure that these images are maintained in a safe environment. Unfortunately, numerous years’ worth of pictures are missing – they were destroyed by a water leak that occurred years ago.
If you have any old, or not-so-old, Westernaires pictures that you’d like to donate to the cause, please contact us at info@westernairesalumni.org. Naturally, we’d love it if you could also send along any background information about the picture contents as well. We’re even happy to scan your photos for you! We scan images using high-quality scanning equipment and high dpi (dots per inch). If you get your photos to us, we’ll do the scanning and then return the originals as well as a digital copy of the files.
Our mailing address is: