Just for Fun

Share Your Vintage Aerial Photo Contest!

Posted on 08/30/2019 by Lance Roper in Just for Fun

Example photo for contest submission

Over the past 10 years, we’ve helped thousands of you reconnect with a piece of your personal history. We’re inviting you to share a photo of your Vintage Aerial print in a fun and easy contest where you have a shot at winning a $250 Amazon Gift Card!

Daniel Boone's Home

Posted on 06/10/2013 by Lance Roper in Just for Fun

We’re often reminded how rich and diverse our collection of photographs is when we find photos that represent our nationâs history. Today, we’d like to share a photo of Daniel Boone’s home in St. Charles County, Missouri.

Daniel Boone is, without a doubt, an iconic figure in our country and this photo shows what is now the Daniel Boone Home and Heritage Center.

To learn more, visit their website at danielboonehome.com

Drunken Pilot

Posted on 01/27/2012 by Lance Roper in Just for Fun

This video features stunt pilot, Kyle Franklin, performing his famous “Ben Whabnaski Comedy Act.” Would you ride in a plane with him?

Reflections from our President - 2011

Posted on 12/13/2011 by Fritz Byers in Just for Fun

Time is an ocean, but it ends at the shore
Bob Dylan, "O, Sister"

There’s an old tale about two hipsters in a small rowboat, bobbing on the ocean, dawdling away the day and absorbing the splendor of the watery world around them. One says to the other, “Man, look at all the water.” And the other says, “Yeah, man, and that’s just the top.”

I recall the tale this morning as I reflect on the year that has passed, and the year to come. It’s a truism, perhaps a cliché, to say that the units of time we impose on the flow of life as it washes over us are artificial. Of course, we need those units to organize what we do – how else might we arrange to do things together? “Meet me this afternoon at 4”, or “My baby’s leaving for Tanzania at the end of the month,” or the always-curious “Daylight Savings Time begins next Sunday” are essential constructs of social organization. If you want a trippy thought-exercise, try sometime to imagine how early humans managed their affairs without any shared sense of how to measure and talk about time, and seasons, uncertain of the Sun God’s plans for the future.

Words in a Story

Posted on 07/07/2011 in Just for Fun

Below is a word cloud made up of the words that most often appear in the stories from our customers. The larger the word, the more often it was used. With hundreds of stories on our site this is a pretty cool collection of words!

Have you shared your story yet? Get started, by finding your photo here.

The Reality of the Past...

Posted on 06/07/2011 by Sam Melden in Just for Fun

“Occasionally one stumbles into a coincidence that, like an unexpected alignment of windows, momentarily cancels out the sense of historical whereabouts, giving with an overwhelming immediacy an awareness of the reality of the past. The possibility of this awareness is always immanent in old homesites. It may suddenly bear in upon one at the sight of old orchard trees standing in the dooryard of a house now filled with baled hay. It came to me when I looked out the attic window of a disintegrating log house and saw a far view of the cleared ridges with wooded hollows in between, and nothing in sight to reveal the date.”Wendell Berry

Preservation

Posted on 04/27/2011 by Sam Melden in Just for Fun

We are in middle of National Preservation Week And while this can be a vague or open-ended concept to some, we think there is significant meaning in the idea of preservation. Whether preservation makes you think of the environment, family heritage or the physical restoration of a valuable item… it is an important concept to consider. And we want to know what you think of when you hear preservation?

For us, at Vintage Aerial, the power of a photo allows us to preserve so much. By connecting yesterday’s memories with photographs from our collection, we hope to introduce your great-grandchildren to your grandparents through a photo of the home or farm they worked so hard for. That is preservation, and that is the work we wan to be about.

But enough about us; what about you? When your time is up, what will still be here? Did you have an impact in making it last? What do you hope to preserve?

(Photo taken from Maureen Taylor’s blog)

National Preservation week will lead into National Preservation Month during the month of May. Look out for great deals and offers from Vintage Aerial to allow you to preserve that which is most important to you.

The Wonder of a Photo

Posted on 01/19/2011 by Sam Melden in Just for Fun

When I got to the office today I made my standard tour of the sites I like to visit. Several Ag-related blogs I enjoy reading, a few news pages, and of course a few social media news sources. In today’s tour I came across this article that Mashable posted last night.

A few days ago a guy in Brooklyn posted a video about a new adventure he is in, all surrounding a roll of film. As I watched I was reminded, in a very distinct way, of the wonder that is held in a roll of film. Todd, in the video, seeing these images for the first time, is left to fill in the details. It is up to him to develop the stories and backstories of these images. And it made me realize, again, all that is captured in a single photo, a single roll.

Our archive has 700,000 rolls similar to this one in their mystery. All containing close to 40 images of peoples personal histories. What an amazing collection of stories and wonder. Ok, take a look at the video…

Reflections from our President

Posted on 12/30/2010 by Fritz Byers in Just for Fun

In the world according to Garp, we are obliged to remember everything."
John Irving

Recently, a television news magazine devoted time to the phenomenon of people who remember in detail every moment of every day of their lengthening lives.* The gaggle of medical researchers, psychological probers, and curiosity seekers circling around these woebegone souls was enough to make me thankful, perhaps for the first time, that there are some things I can forget. But I am more thankful for the things I remember, and for the honor we are able to grant others and ourselves when we remember, if only for a time, what we have been through, alone and together.

We were given this year, finally, the full autobiography of the great Mark Twain. Is it possible for someone so well-known and so thoroughly woven into the fabric of our culture to be underappreciated? Reading this book makes me think so. I recall that Twain was the one who framed the inarguable truth, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” And this is why, on this morning of this waning year, it is apt that we reflect on what we have seen and what it might mean.

Coffee & Pictures Help Create Stories

Posted on 12/15/2010 in Just for Fun

Here at VA we are all about listening to stories and telling ours. Recently we saw the campaign Starbucks was running as part of their holiday promotion this year. If you visit their themed website you have a chance to create and share a holiday wish or story.

We know that feeling of a great story shared between family and friends very well. In the case of Starbucks, a cup of coffee and a friend create a great environment for story sharing.