Do you ever look at your boxes of family photos and despair about when you’ll ever get around to sorting them out? You know, writing names and dates on the back, putting them in albums, chucking out the ones you look ugly in …? How about scanning them all? Sorry but this post might put you off doing anything.
What started out as a smallish, one-off photo scanning job morphed, over a period of 5 years, into a large, complex project with no end in sight.
In January 2008 I scanned about 200 family photos for my mother’s 80th birthday party to create a slide show. It was a huge success – everyone loved reminiscing over images of weddings, Christmas celebrations, beach holidays, babies and grandchildren. Except I ended up with such a sore arm from all the repetitive work that I needed a long mental break before I could face switching on the scanner again.
I made another start in 2011 and then ran out of enthusiasm as the pile of photos and old documents grew. There was only a bit more progress in 2012, and finally a serious amount of effort this year.
I got to the end (‘This is definitely the last photo I’m ever scanning’) about 5 times in September. But then I’d find something extra that just had to be included. Like a packet of scrunched-up birth and death notices, a box of forgotten 35 mm slides, or the Christmas family group photos of 1992 and 1996. I finally called a halt in October and burned about 1400 items to DVD and handed out the copies. (I really didn’t want to refer to it as Volume 1 but the reality is there’s already a pile of photos and documents for Volume 2.)
The bottom line, it was a lot of work but it was a labour of love too.
So much of a family’s history is written in its photos, letters, documents, wedding invitations, marriage certificates … I got incredibly emotional quite frequently because once you start paying close attention to the faces and places and dates, the photos are no longer two-dimensional. They paint stories about grandparents, great grandparents and great-uncles you never met. Or about great-aunts you only ever knew as old and slightly batty. I could now imagine them as flirtatious teens and as strong, independent women in their 20s, 30s and 40s; women who knew how to run a pub or a private hospital or drive their own Pontiac …
Vere
Eve
Joan
Bette
… and who wrote sweet little letters to each other.
I cleaned up a lot of photos in Photoshop. The old ones in particular had lots of dust marks, spots and scratches and I felt both a responsibility and a need to do the best possible job I could. Sort of as a way of acknowledging that these relatives of mine had lived real and full lives that shouldn’t be diminished or forgotten just because we never had a chance to know them well or at all.
Some photos were badly damaged and required more Photoshop skills than I’ll ever possess (love your work, B). Clever tweaking brought out hidden details in clothing and backgrounds. Pictures that looked washed out suddenly came alive just by adjusting the contrast.
I spent a lot of time cross-checking dates, and adding or updating dates, names and addresses on the backs of photos. For the image files themselves I developed a naming convention and a logical folder structure – but hey I’ll tell you all about that in my next post.
I love this photo. It’s from 1938. That’s my mum up the back on the left. She’s wearing a blue crêpe frock with pink ribbons. Her mother made most of the girls’ outfits.
Third bit from the right 
I sit in awe at the wonderful job you and B have achieved for for your family making history alive again. Working with older people I know how these photos make care staff see a person not just an old person. It also helps staff as can question about the photos and the memories often come alive even with dementia. A wonderful read thanks
Thanks, Marilyn. Lots of hard work but it was definitely worth it. Photos are so important.
Beautiful, heartfelt work. XXX
I did something similar last year for my father in law, sooooo tedious. What kept me going was the knowledge I was preserving someone’s history before it was too late. My Dad has an armful of VHS tapes with home movies on them from the 80’s, does anyone own a VHS player anymore? I found one, but the magnetic tape had lost much of the information and the footage is now gone.
So what resolution and bit depth were you scanning the images in? Did you save the images as TIFF uncompressed or as something like JPG? Did you use any programs for collating and indexing your collection? I’m interested to hear what you and B decided upon.
Such a shame about those VHS tapes losing quality. I saved all my images as JPGs. The resolutions were a bit all over the place – depending on when I scanned and what I scanned. The first project in 2008 was just a slide show and I didn’t think much beyond getting 200 images scanned in time for the party. I know now the resolutions for those photos could have been higher. Still, I couldn’t be bothered going back and redoing them. I’ll go into more detail about resolution etc. in the next post.