So what do you do with all your old photographs?

Parent Cafe
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<p>I desperately need some ideas for what to do with the 9 thousand (at least!) non-digital photos we’ve accumulated over the past 30 years. They are currently a mess - I have four different places in the house where they’ve been stuffed in no discernible order. And don’t get me started on the negatives, which have long since been separated from the originals.</p>

<p>Please tell me what you do, CCers! I know there are some of you out there with efficient and maybe even pretty photo storage systems. Youngest d has a few weeks before she starts as a camp counselor and is willing to take on the project, but we’d like to pick a workable system first. </p>

<p>We recently bought a scanner that does photographic negatives, but I don’t know if we’ll actually scan 9,000 (at least!) negatives. I think it would be faster to buy … something (don’t know what) and store it somewhere. Can anyone out there help us get organized?</p>

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<p>The first five years of our marriage are in albums. The next five years are in boxes, sorted by date. I put post-ts on the first one of each group with an approx, date. The negatives are in our safety deposit box. I find the boxes work well. It’s easy to find things and retrieve them when we want to. We scanned some of them recently for one of those digital photo frames. We didn’t scan negatives though - they are in their original envelopes and dated, but it takes forever to look at negatives to locate the two or three shots in each roll of film that are really worth preserving. I’m sure though that scanning negatives has better results than scanning the prints.</p>

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<p>frazzled, if it makes you feel any better, I can assure you that any system–or non-system–you are using is better than mine.</p>

<p>My 17 yr. old daughter has announced that this summer SHE is taking on the job of getting the old photos in order, since her mother (me) is clearly incapable of it.</p>

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<p>I feel the happiness!!!</p>

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<p>In the long run, I think scanning them is the only solution. I have started doing this, and learned early on that I didn’t really want to scan all of them. The 9000 will probably reduce by half, or perhaps even a lot more, depending on how many semi-duplicate pictures your family takes.</p>

<p>I think scanning pictures could be a really good part-time job for a teenager.</p>

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<p>Hunt, speaking as someone who doesn’t do the photos-on-the-computer thing, can you tell me what you do after you scan them? How do you organize them? What photo system do you use? Does it allow you to organize and identify them with text somehow?</p>

<p>I agree that this would be a great service for a teen or a college student to offer as a summer job. I’d hire them!</p>

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<p>Our old photos are in boxes and organized in envelopes which are labeled. D had me looking to see if there were any of her cooking as a child (her sorority senior gift requested favorite recipes and any pictures of the girls with food as a child; we’re still waiting to see if it will materialize) and I realized my idea of scanning the best wouldn’t take very long. I was a terrible photographer and would be lucky to have 25% worth scanning. D insists I need to get a digital camera (she and her brother do the photography now) and I will be better.<br>
For those who have scanned images, where are you storing them - cd or USB?</p>

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<p>I’m so glad you started this thread. I keep saying that now that we are empty nesters I really need to take the time to organize our 9000+ photos, but am at a loss as to where to begin.</p>

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<p>There are all sorts of software for sorting and labelling photos, but I confess that all I do is store them in computer file folders that say things like 2008>Family>Vacations>Beach trip</p>

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<p>alwaysamom- I have my photos on my mac in iphoto. I also use an online service called
smugmug. You can easily organize the photos by categories, put captions, etc. Also, if you ever have any type of disaster and your computer or the hard copies of your photos are destroyed, you can easily retrieve them from smugmug. I believe they keep copies in 3 different states.</p>

<p>To the OP, there are online services that will scan photos for you. The one that I’ve looked at but haven’t used is scanmyphotos. I’ve scanned lots of old photos and negatives myself. It’s tedious work. The poster who said that you don’t need to scan all of the photos is correct also. A lot of photos may be similar and consider who the photos will be of interest to long term. For example, I’m more likely to scan most of my kids baby photos than most of the photos of my high school friends.</p>

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<p>I’m swallowing my technology-challenged pride and asking what I’ve been wondering; how does scanning negatives help exactly in organizing your photo history? Does this mean that after they’re scanned you can get rid of the originals? And how exactly do you retrieve a desired negative and produce a print from it? Wow, embarrassing, but worth it, if I can figure this out.</p>

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<p>We have our digital photos sorted in folders. Year, month, activity (if there are a lot in a month). Activity is broad anything from “Thanksgiving”, to each day of a Scotland vacation, to “Warhammer landscape”.Some photos I pull out and put them or copies of the files other places. Periodically we’ve downloaded them on CDs or DVDs and stick the disc in the safe deposit box.</p>

<p>canamdance - once you scan the negative you have a digital file and can either print it from your computer or get it printed by one of those machines that print photos. BTW for those who have slides - the scanners that scan negatives generally also scan slides. They come out really well.</p>

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<p>What I do with my mother’s old photos when I have time: Speed through a box at a time throwing away all the double and triple prints that (a) are totally out of focus, (b) show someone’s body from the neck or the knees down, (c) show 10 different views of the same Christmas tree, or (d) show an entire body in focus but are so unflattering that they bear no resemblance to the real person. I am reducing her collection by about 75 percent this way. She was not a good photographer, and I don’t think my father ever picked up a camera even though he was a journalist who loved working with photographers. Eventually, I would love to make each sibling a CD with childhood photos. My mother is the classic example of “I’m saving these for the children when they grow up,” but the grown-up children have never laid eyes on much of this stuff.</p>

<p>What I do with my own old photos: Try not to become my mother. Probably 60 percent of my adult lifetime photos are in albums, and the rest are in marked envelopes and have been weeded out. (I did not do this regularly, but in spurts every year or so.) I also use iPhoto. I try to take the time to edit downloads to a reasonable number. I post selected photos on Flickr–some restricted to family and friends, others available to the world. Sometimes I make print albums via iPhoto (has anyone used BookSmart?) and have toyed with the idea of making an annual album but haven’t gotten around to it. I miss being able to pull out an album easily and look at it. All of this makes me sound much more efficient than I really am, by the way.</p>

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<p>I organize them by year and month and have photos that I like and that are current on my home page. I have about 70 thumbnails so I’m reminded of the pictures every time I visit my homepage.</p>

<p>Scanners are a pain unless you have a device that will scan them automatically. Two of the guys at work have these and I may consider getting one for our old pictures. I’d ask them if I could borrow one but they’re older models that don’t use current technology and it’s probably cheaper to just get a new one compared to looking for an interface card for the old technology.</p>

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<p>I too use iPhoto now. I back it up from my mac on to an external hard drive so that there are two copies. </p>

<p>What I am doing now is gradually working my way through the pre digital photos, scanning them in and putting them in annual “albums”. I am starting with the albums on the theory that the best photos were probably put into an album. Eventually I’ll start on the piles of other photos - but I have something like 20 albums to do first.</p>

<p>The other priority right now is getting representative shots together so that I can build a digital book as a present for my wife on our 25th anniversary this summer - right now it is looking more like a Christmas present but I am still hopeful that a miracle will occur.</p>

<p>:)</p>

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<p>geezermom - I had to laugh when I read the first part of your post. I have so many of those pics you so aptly described. Each kid has an album of themelves up to about 4 years old. I also have an album of the two together during the early years. After that, I got way too busy to put albums together so all the pics are still in their developer envelopes - duplicates and all! I still don’t have a digital camera and confess to solving the pic problem by not taking many pics over the past decade. I know I am going to regret not having lots of pics of the kids growing up, but somehow photography fell by the wayside. I have all my envelopes of pics stored in a plastic container. One day I’ll get around to sorting through them.</p>

<p>To frazzled1 - just make sure you use acid-free albums or boxes to protect your pics.</p>

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<p>I am a big scrapbooker and I like Creative Memories Memory Manager. It is inexpensive and easy to sort photos in to folders and sort boxes. I have also used Picasso…Google’s photo place. You can scan and sort but I would first sort your hard copies. Start by making piles by years or person, or holiday, etc. Whatever makes sense to you. Then you can go back and break them down into smaller categories. There are also tons of archival storage boxes. If you have lots of digital photos I would put them on an external hard drive.</p>

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<p>You should also make sure that everything is backed up somewhere offsite, in case your house burns down, or somebody comes and steals both your computer and your external hard drive.</p>

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<p>My suggestion is to start with most recent. If you still use a film camera, make sure you always deal with current photos first. After dealing with current photos, work backwards. Give yourself an easy target. Scan just a couple of your favorites every day. For a file name, I recommend that you start with the year, then month, then day if known, then word or two description: 2009 5 20 BinxS grad. The photos will automatically sort themselves then “alphabetically” by date, and it won’t matter if you scan them in order.</p>

<p>I do not scan negatives. Never knew you could do such a thing. And have had a digital since 2002, so only photos prior to that are an issue. Fortunately, I was good about putting them in albums, so they are all organized already.</p>

<p>My S2 graduated from HS in 2004, and I was planning on making him an album for graduation. It didn’t quite happen on the time frame I’d planned. I am now up to age 10. :slight_smile: However, it got me going through albums from 1985 on forward, choosing the favorites from each year, and scanning them. (Then printing them, then arranging them. Then finding cutsie quotes, etc.) The good part, though, is that many of my favorite photos are now scanned.</p>

<p>And when I get to start my D’s HS graduation album (she is now a rising college junior) many of the photos will already be digital by then.</p>

<p>My photos are backed up on an external hard drive. Periodically, we burn them onto CDs and store them in a firesafe. I also upload many favorites now onto Picasa. I have been scanning old family photos (from late 1800s and early 1900s) and putting them on Picasa as well, so that all family members near and far can have access to them.</p>

<p>I do not generally make “hard copies” of my digital photos. Every year I sift through the previous year’s photos, and choose 6 or so that highlight our family’s activities, and print them. They go in a book on our coffee table that begins with my college graduation 28 years ago. (I only have enough room for another year or two.)</p>

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<p>I’m going to take the contrary view that scanning photos, organizing them on your computer, and backing them up is not worth the effort. You still have the hard copy photos to deal with. (and I have a supertitious resistance to throwing away photos of my kids.)</p>

<p>You could scan a few of the really precious ones, I guess, because hard copies will fade/change color with time. But that’s one of the charms of them.</p>

<p>My D loves to browse through the boxes of photos, and I’m sure any grandchildren I have will too. When I visit my parents, I love going through their old photo albums, particularly the ones of the great grandparents in the old country. I love the old, cracked albums, the black and white photos, the whole physical experience. That cannot be duplicated by iPhoto. I think there is a lot lost in going digital, the fact that most photos only live on your screen. To me, an old photo is almost like a painting–i love the patina it acquires.</p>

<p>I organized them into those large index card boxes by year in their original envelope from the developer. Or you can just put them in loose using those filing tabs that most of the boxes come with. The boxes are stacked in a bookshelf with the date marked on the outside. It works pretty well.</p>