Ken Trajanowski, veteran services officer, created a website that compares photos from the past with photos of the present from the same perspective.
Photo credit: Deborah Gauthier

NORTHBRIDGE, Mass. – When he was 12, Ken Trajanowski was the kid running around town with a camera. “I was an early geek,’’ he said.

He was particularly interested in old photographs, an interest that remains with him today.

Trajanowski, veteran services officer for the towns of Northbridge, Uxbridge, Sutton and Douglas, is a self-taught web designer who created the website Time Machine Photos (timemachine-photos.com).

“It’s an idea that was with me a long time,’’ he said. Using his collection of photographs he took in the 60s and 70s and old postcards, he recreates the image as it appears today.

 “I try to take a new photo in the closest perspective to the original as possible,” he said. He puts both photos on the website for comparison – his time machine.

It only brings users from the present to the past and back again. “I’m not sure I want to see the future anyway,’’ he said.

“It’s fascinating to me to see how things have changed,’’ he said. He was a history buff in school, he said, but not to the point of A’s for grades. “I think when you grow up you have a better appreciation for it.’’

His home page shows the old gray barn on the corner of Edgemere Ave. and Rte. 122 as it was in the 60s and as it appears today. “I grew up on that street and that’s where we hung around as kids all the time,’’ he said.

The site right now has photos from Northbridge, Uxbridge and Woonsocket, but Trajanowski plans to regularly add to the collection and include many more towns. “I have a lot of old postcards I’m going to use,’’ he said, but he could use more.

So he’s asking local historians and history buffs to share their photos. “They can contact me on the website’s contact page,’’ he said.

He’s not putting a limit to the numbers of towns he’ll include. “Ideally, it could be throughout the country,’’ he said.

Trajanowski, a Vietnam-era veteran now living in Woonsocket, was born and raised in Northbridge. “My wife (Joan Colby) and I actually met in grammar school in the fifth grade,’’ he said. They started dating in high school, married, and had two daughters in Spain where he was stationed while in the Navy.

They now have two grandchildren, ages 10 and 5, with another on the way.

For more information on Trajanowski, visit the town’s veteran services website www.valleyveterans.org, which he designed, or timemachine-photos.com.