Generations of photos

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Started 2 years ago by JuliaJayne
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JuliaJayne
Member

I am starting to sort through family photos and I'm seeking some creative solutions.

Issue #1: I have many photos of my son. He was my only child plus he was the first grandchild on both sides, so we have lots of extra photos from the grandparents and others. At the time, 35 mm cameras were affordable and photo processing was cheap. Everyone had a camera, everyone took photos, and everyone had duplicates made to pass along. It was fun at the time, but now it's so much to store and too much to look at. There are 2 photo boxes full of photos and 2 large albums from the grandparents of mainly my son. Plus the husband and I each have albums given to us by our parents when we were kids. Plus our separate collections. I find it nearly impossible to throw out photos of my son even though there are so many.

I am currently helping my mom and dad declutter and found that they still have a shoe box full of photos; mostly of their life before children.

Issue #2: My husband is from a big family, and there are many photos with his siblings and their kids. I thought of scanning most of the family photos into Photobucket or whatever, making a private family album, and giving each of the family member access, so they can view them and print photos if they want. I would do the same with photos I have of my brother's family. If I do this, I will keep only the very best photos of each person and throw out the rest. The down side to this is that scanning printable photos takes a long time. Any advice on keeping this task simple?

Issue #3: My photos have a sharp, musty smell which reeks and irritates my sinuses. Is there anyway to get rid of the smell?

Finally: How do I edit everything down into a meaningful collection that will feel special and my son would enjoy? I don't want him to feel burdened with an enormous photo collection that he might resent storing. He is an amateur photographer, who's started his own photo collection. If he gets married and has kids, his collection will grow even more. That size collection on top of the one I have will be enormous. At least it seems that way to me.

I threw out most of the blurry photos, those with awkward expressions, etc., and am working on weeding-out duplicates, but there will be many photos that remain. Some will go into a scrap book, but what about everything else? Photo boxes I suppose.

How does a person maintain multi-generational photo collection from large families without burdening the inherent generation? Scanning everything and throwing away all originals is not an option.

Posted 2 years ago #
chacha1
Member

sorry JJ, I got nothin'. I am planning to scan, not individual photos, but the entire album page of my old scrapbooks etc and just save the pdf files. I can use those to make a real book on Blurb if I want, or just have the electronic file. Old scrapbooks and albums take up an awful lot of space, they are heavy and hard to move, they don't look very nice on a bookshelf, and they do degrade. I don't think the image quality of a scan is going to suffer as much over my lifetime as the image quality of an already-decades-old printed photo.

But you say scanning and tossing isn't an option, and clearly you have a large family - which I don't. Maybe somebody else out there will have a winning solution for you!

Posted 2 years ago #
JuliaJayne
Member

Blurb - I didn't know about it until now, but I love it. I will have to think about that. Putting my parents life in a book would make a nice Xmas present.

Posted 2 years ago #
Bobbi
Member

I know the feeling. Here's WHAT and WHY I did what I did.

1) I sorted all the physical photos by year. Other ways of sorting might make more sense to you. This chore took several weeks while envelopes, folders, and boxes were all over the living room. It's amazing how many different places photos are kept/stored/placed. This made sense to me and if I had any idea of the year, I could find the photo. Of course, all the trash was trashed.

2) THEN I scanned almost every photo. It took months. I made it a game and contest with myself. Put on the music. Set the timer. Watch TV while scanning. It gets methodical so time passes. (I sent our important/best slides to Scancafe in spite of my qualms of not seeing any of it again. They did a great job with no hitch.) I made sure to mark the back of the photo so I would know it had been scanned. I scan the photo as a .tif. It takes more memory but gives a better quality print and looks better on a large screen.

3) Some of the photos shout "Give me to Billy!" or "Give me to Aunt Ethel!" Easy enough to collect a package and ship it off with a CD of the photos. You could also include other family photos of interest on the CD.

It is important for me to have the photos digitally saved. Who knows if there will be a house fire, flood, etc.? I am also the family genealogist so it is important to connect the extended family photos to their genealogy info. My children (grown) are always on the move and do not have room or interest in keeping lots of old photographs, even their own. However they are digitally savvy so will appreciate having all their grandparents' (and beyond), parents' and their childhood photos on a disk and/or online. Eventually, someday, the photos will be thrown away unless you can gift them to an appropriate library in a format that they can use. Let’s face it, many of my photos are of interest only to me.

Like chacha1 I am scanning my scrapbook pages (those that aren't already done digitally) as a backup and post online. (Note: some people still prefer to hold a photo album in their hands, especially if they are elderly.)

I keep the original photos but throw away the negatives (that was scary at first!).

Don’t keep photos of “people-I-don’t-know-who-they-are” and no one else does either.

Sorry - no quick way to solve the problem.

Bottom line (whew, took me a long time to get here), it's worth the time and effort. Make a plan, part of which will be: it-will-take-a-long-time and that's OK. AND the plan will change over time. That’s OK, too. It's worth it.

Posted 2 years ago #
Another Deb
Member

I tend to sort images taken during my lifetime by year, then event. The ancient pictures of ancestors, I sort by family line.

Even though you have many multiples of your son, I would imagine that you have some that totally warm your heart every time you look at them. In a series of similar pictures, lay 4 0r 5 of them out flat. Note where you eye goes and where you spend your gaze time. These are the pictures to save.

Posted 2 years ago #
JuliaJayne
Member

Bobbi, thank you for putting the job into perspective. You're right, there is no way around how much time it will take, but getting the photos online will be a huge relief. I worry about them during tornado season. When there are tornado warnings, I always pack up the photos into a laundry basket and take them into the basement. It felt like a crazy thing to do at first, even my husband and son looked at me strangly at first, but it would break my heart to lose them.

Deb, The ancient pictures are the easy ones, aren't they? Back in the day they didn't take 10 photos of their baby sitting on the sofa in a cute outfit making cute faces. I thought about that a lot when I was doing the first sort.
I love your idea of how to choose the best photo out of a series. I will try that. I'm not sure it will work, but I will try my best. :)

Posted 2 years ago #
rachel_413
Member

There's also companies that will scan the photos for you, but I've never personally used one.

Posted 2 years ago #
JuliaJayne
Member

I'm very tempted to use one of those companies, although I think I would miss the experience. :)

Posted 2 years ago #
anastrophe
Member

You say they were 35mm, but how old are they? And how strong is this smell? Is it faint, or does it make your eyes smart and nose wrinkle?

If it's a strong smell and the photos are older (pre-1960's) and you have negatives, they could be cellulose nitrate. Nitrocellulose negatives decompose over time; they are toxic and can be extremely flammable. They have been known to spontaneously ignite in storage containers. If you have negatives which are bubbly or soft and smell really strongly you should be very, very careful with them. Contact a professional to have them disposed of safely--don't put them back in storage, and don't just toss them in the trash can.

If they're modern prints it could be mold or mildew, which is also not super for your health but not so dangerous. I'd sort out the ones you want to keep, and airing them in a low-humidity environment...but again, I'd contact a professional if they are something you care about. There are other possibilities.

The National Archives/ Library of Congress has a good website on family photos if anyone hasn't seen it: http://www.archives.gov/preservation/family-archives/

Posted 2 years ago #
Amy
Member

My mother recently passed away. She had in her possession a large box of old photos. Most were from her youth. College days, early marriage. A few were of ancesters long gone, with no names or dates written on the back. I have no idea who many of these people are.
I took a few of the pictures home with me, along with a scrapbook she had made while at school, acting silly with her girlfriends, and the rest of the pictures I left for my sister.
I doubt I will ever look at any of them again. Sentimental clutter is the hardest to get rid of.

Posted 2 years ago #
nellieb
Member

Amy, here's the lesson for all of us: date and title everything!

I grew up with a grandfather who loved photography and both my sister and I are/were professional photographers. I have 40 or 50 photo albums arranged chronologically as well as a few boxes of miscellaneous photos.

My final goal this year is to scan as much as possible. I purchased a reasonably priced scanner that is good for scanning photos. It's very time intensive and I am considering using a service so the project is done more quickly. I will then select a few photos that are special to me and collage them. The others will be sent to my sister, brother, mother, nephews and a few friends. Whatever is left will be trashed.

Every few years, I pick up one or two of the albums and take a trip down memory lane. But the albums took up so much space on the bookshelves that I packed them up and stored them away. Now I want the albums to be gone so once I've reached my uncluttering goal (http://drawerbydrawer.wordpress.com/) I will begin the photography project.

Posted 2 years ago #
Anonymous

I have started to tackle the same project. I am embarressed to say that I have hundreds, if not thousands of hard copy photos in my possession. I store all in chronological order. The priority is from 1998 to current. However, from 1998 to 2000, I only have hard copies. From 2001 to 2007 I have both digital and hard copies. From 2008 to current, I only have digital photo books. I have been sending the unwanted hard copies to the people who are in them. I was surprised to hear that most of the people are excited about receiving them, which is great since it was a heartbreaker to throw them out. I am keeping my favorites, and shredding the rest. I have approximately 8 boxes to go, but was crushed when I opened 4 and discovered that they were "Doubles with negatives" of the ones that were in photo albums. Ugh. What was I thinking back then? why would I place one copy in a photo album, and another in a storage box? Regardless, once I've completed my weeding out, I'll start scanning. I have a regular scanner, but am considering buying a photo scanner with automatic feeder. Or, who knows, maybe I'll spend the extra cash and have them done professionally. Big project...but I'm goal oriented, so I will get it done. Regardless.

Posted 1 year ago #
irishbell
Member

It sounds like this is a summer project for several of us! A good time for a few trips down memory lane. The kids really enjoy looking at them too, so it takes a little longer.I started a few days ago, didn't get too far, but I'll keep plugging away. I culled 14 albums down to 4 1/2 photo boxes full.

Posted 1 year ago #
jbeany
Member

I'm with everyone else on the "there's no quick way" thing. I'm sorting my grandmother's enormous collection of photo albums. (If I could go back in time, I'd shoot the person who gave Gram her first camera.) She has thousands of photos, many randomly arranged and rearranged in nearly 50 albums. Some of it is easy to sort, especially since she was a lousy photographer! Smudgy, blurry shots with fingers over the lens immediately get trashed. Her habit of taking shots out the car or motor home window while on vacation helps as well. It's really easy to pitch the thousandth shot of the highway somewhere in one of the 48 states. My Kitchen counter, kitchen table, and 6 foot workspace/computer desk are currently covered in piles labeled by year - starting with 1916 up to the present. I also have several designated shelves labeled with cousins' names, who are receiving many originals after I've scanned a copy for myself. I"m almost done with sorting albums, then I will start scanning in groups by year. Anything really interesting will be scanned alone to make reprints easier. I've been watching Hoarders on line while scanning - makes it easier to toss photos when they are scanned!

Posted 1 year ago #
Julia
Member

My sisters and I have split up a large collection of albums. We want to upload everything to the web so that we can share the work with other family members - but we're not anxious to share with the world at large.

I'd love to hear opinions on the best services for a project like this - I've never really used photobucket or flickr or anything like them (I don't take a lot of photographs.)

Posted 1 year ago #

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