A project I started working on a few days ago is organizing decades of photos I have inherited, plus ones I’ve had from the 80’s. They are a mish mash of lives of extended family, old ones of me…literally everything you can think of.
I know how I’m organizing some…the ones from 1930 to 1979. But the ones I’m confused how to do are are the photos from the my college years 1978 on with DH to mid 1990’s? There are pictures of DH and I, pictures of family, our old house, extended aunts and uncles, family events. It’s a little more difficult in many of them to know the exact year. I would guess there are about 400-500 in this group.
My focus is to organize for my kids one day because they won’t really know timeframes.
Do I do one group of just pictures of me and people in my life by timeframe? Then another during the same time frame of say other people where I’m not in the picture?
For instance it’s 1985. There is a picture of DH and I at out first house. Then another picture during the same year of My parents and aunts someplace else? Ugh…don’t know what to do. My aunts did not have children. So I’ve inherited really old pictures of them from way back when.
To me, the way you organize them - by who is on the photo, by date, etc. - would be less important than including information on what is in the photo. On the back of the photo perhaps? Or a description in a photo album next to the photo? Who, what, where, when. Whatever you might know. That will keep future generations from guessing or not knowing.
I have to do the same thing, although it sounds like you have a much larger time frame than I have to deal with.
I have one set of my mom’s side of the family up until I was married. I also have an album of my Dh’s and my life before children and a set for each kids’ baby photos. Now I’m putting together a series of albums of family times during their childhoods and growing up. I’ll probably make additional ones of each child’s teen years- so many photos of sports, proms, scouts, etc., that it becomes quite a lot unless I break them up in some way by activity or time-period. I also have separate albums of different family vacations we took.
These photos are pre-digital era. Everything post digital from around 2000 on stays on computers and back-ups, used to make shutterfly photo books to commemorate events or for gifts. A lot of people put their old photos in digital format so they can be saved more compactly. It might make sense to have some of my old photos transferred to CD or something, but I like to have actual books to share with people when the mood strikes. I’m sure future generations will find them quaint, and I hope they are saved and passed down in some way.
Indexing is most properly done by thinking of the end user, in addition to what information you have the most of. If you can identify every person, every place, you could sort by person, or location. But that’s not really very likely, is it?
Your children are most likely to look by time (“Do we have a picture of grandma as a newlywed? Me as a baby?”) , and if you sort roughly by half-decade, or decade, it will give a sense of continuity in addition to allowing you to include semi-indentified photos in some sort of context. I would put them in piles , and then start labelling. Throw out photos you can’t indentify at all, or put a question mark on the back.
Everyone should label every photo they have with date, names, and location. Go get started on that now! Yes, digital ones, too – make it the folder title, or the jpeg name. Even better, burn a disc, and then have them all printed, file by year. Your grandchildren and great-grandchildren will bless your name in the years to come
Don’t overthink this. You can spend hours and hours segmenting photos to the point where your kids might be too overwhelmed to go through them.
I would start sorting by decade (put up several tables so you can really spread out). Then, if you know more specific dates, you can line up the photos within that decade.
Ask your kids how (and how much) they want to see and know about these photos and the people in them. It might be that a small photo album of each side of the family (ancestors) and then one of their parents is enough to satisfy their curiosity.
If you are personally very interested in this project, then ignore my summary advice and dig in. Maybe there are other extended family members who would enjoy seeing your albums after you put them together.
I worked with an older client helping her document her life stories. We did some writing along with sorting of photos. I asked her what was most important to her, what she wanted to express about her life, and we used those filters to make the project more manageable.
After writing the stories and adding some photos to illustrate or complement the time frame mentioned, we sorted the remaining photos into boxes for each of her children to have.
Have fun with this project, that is the main thing. Don’t let those pesky “should” thoughts guilt you into doing more than you are able to handle and still be having fun.
Thanks all. One thing I am doing which is taking the most time is writing dates and names on the backs. I have about 3 photo albums I started pre kids after I was married. I have about 27 albums after I started having kids…each dated. The kids still get into them.
I think for photos outside of my own nuclear family, I’m going to put together by decade…but write the exact year on the back. Some photos need their own individual grouping, no matter the date…like my parents wedding photos or pictures of my friends that I made when I lived in SA during high school. I have seen these people on and off through the decades and it would be nice to just go to one small case to pull all our photos through the years.
I will try to not overthink it. I am making progress. I am having fun going down memory lane. Although it is making me sad seeing pictures of my Dad throughout his life, since he just died in July.
Please be careful that you use a pen or pencil that is safe for writing on photos. It would be sad to have all your efforts physically eat away at the photos over time. There are pencils made especially for writing on backs of photos.
A valuable part of the process is to identify the best photos and separate them from the rest. Ruthless culling will make it much more likely that people will want to view the collections later. Don’t feel that you have to keep every last out-of-focus, unflattering snapshot. Or if you do keep them all, store the subpar ones separately from the true gems.
Eek…I’ve been sitting on them with a regular ball point pen. Oh well…let’s hope for the best. I’ve had to stop as I’m increasingly overwhelmed. I found 6 more shoe boxes of pictures of everything under the sun. I almost cried.
I think I’m going to have to buy some a couple albums also. A little of this, a little of that. I need to put these in by decade I guess. What a freaking mess I got myself into. Oh well…I’ve been tossing a lot, and I’m sure this will be appreciated at some point.
I have the same project to do, but I want to digitize it - what is the best way to associate the data (Uncle Bob Smith in Smallville, August 1956) with the digitized photo?
They make archive boxes that are much more compact than albums…thats what I ended up with, because a good album was hard to find and all those little pockets…
I digitized about 7,000 slides my parents had. I used the name on the box as the folder, any info on the slide as the file title, and lacking that, I put names or location. I burned everyone a copy, with an index of the folders inside the front cover of the folio. It took about 6 months but otherwise we’d have lost them, and was fun in a bittersweet way
Try to go chronological as much as possible.
Yes, separate closer family from farther flung relatives. Close family near front, others in back.
Don’t worry about photo albums–photo boxes are more compact.
If you want to make a photo album pick ONLY the best and most representative photos to digitize and put in an album (or just make the CD–use CD not DVD)
If there are so-so photos/multiples–put them in a separate file behind everything else.I use index cards to keep track.
Use a photo safe pen. Don’t put dents into old photos writing on them. archival ink.
No need to write on every photo–find a group shot and make sure every one is labeled properly–it can be used as reference for other photos. Digitize it if good, make a few copies and then write directly on the front of a couple of the copies–save for reference.
Ok, thanks. I will skip the albums. I do like the Hard plastic photo storage I purchased for more special type groupings, but I can see how this won’t work with the tons of pictures from a few years. I think I’ll have to go with the boxes for that, by year, and organize those years the best I can. That will be easier to thumb through, put more photos in when found, etc.
Do those boxes have dividers. I saw them at Joann Fabrics, but they all have plastic wrapping around them.
Will pick up a special pen tomorrow, and quite writing every name on each one…that is such a drag.
It’s one of my retirement projects but I don’t even know where to begin! What I need to do is digitize all mine. Plus Mom’s old ones she sent home with me.
I am continuing today and am ruthless, and I mean ruthless in getting rid of photos. I want to keep enough old ones for historical and genealogy purposes, and that I will enjoy. However, the end user …my kids…and whoever after are the ones I have in mind. I bet I have gotten rid of 1/3 of what I am going through. I am not a pack rat by any means…but I do love photos. I hope I don’t regret throwing so many away…but I think they will be uninteresting to many.
Sadly, I think you’ve got to digitize them if you want your kids to ever look at them. They are not likely to go through boxes of photos. They might look at albums.
They love to look at my 27 albums starting in 1993…that is when they starting coming into the world. .I have probably 2-3 k pictures left that I have been organizingI Digitizing them is not on my radar screen right now.
