Save Your Photos #30 of 30!

Well, here it is the last day of September.

I have managed to share a bit of photo inspiration every day for the entire month of September.  I have no idea of the effectiveness of this effort.  I will hope that if my posts reached even ONE person who was helped or inspired to preserve their family photos then my job is well rewarded.  Who knows how many people for how many generations going forward will be impacted by that one person delving into their family photos.

Further, because of my effort, I have spurred myself to get a bit more of my own family's photo history preserved.  Although I am a photo organizer, and well on my way to being in good shape with my own family photos - I consider myself, and my other family members far from photo perfection.

So today's mantras are:

Photo Preservation progress is as important as Photo Preservation perfection.

AND

Begin Preserving your Family Photos NOW and you will never be any further behind than you are today.

Here is my final bit of photo inspiration.  Please share all of my posts with anyone who you think needs a little nudge to get their family photo collection preserved for a lifetime of memories.

Save Your Photos #28 of 30!

Save Your Photos #23 of 30! What's in a project?

About a decade ago, my aunt asked for my help in compiling a photo album to combine the pictures and stories that my grandparents had amassed throughout their lives.

They had left us a volume of information.  Most of the photos were labeled, dated and were loaded with details - truly a blessing.  My grandmother had also written a book of all of her personal memories.  After searching through the photos, my aunt and I realized how many of the photos were depicted in the stories from her book.  Our genealogy had also been chronicled back to the 4th century, again, by my grandmother - a genealogist.

Where some families struggle with a lack of photos and information, our problem was we had so much.  It took a lot of pre-planning to determine what we would include in the album, which items we wanted to reproduce for use in the albums and which of the volumes of stories we knew that we would tell in the book.  Then, we had to figure out what order the items would go in to best highlight all that we had to work with.

Since my maternal grandmother and grandfather were the main storytellers and also the most recent generation, we decided to begin with the two of them.

First came my grandfather - we told the story of his childhood up to the time that he met my grandmother.  Then, we went backwards in his direct lineage as far as we had photos and memorabilia that we could tell stories about. 

We presented my grandmother the same way. 

Once we had established who they were and from whence they'd come, we told the story of their meeting, their marriage and their newlywed life.

Next, we followed them through their first houses, each of their three children (my mother, the aunt who was making the book with me and my uncle).  We took the children through the beginning of their childhoods, basically their early family life.

After that we decided to feature some special categorical chapters of their lives...the lake where they vacationed for many years, their pets through the years, their Christmas traditions, etc...

We didn't use all the items we had - nor did we tell all the stories - there could be many additional albums still to come.  But the two-volume photo albums that we produced presented a real picture of who they were and told the stories that they themselves helped to author by being such prolific picture takers, detail labelers and storytellers.

The last time I worked on finishing the album with my aunt, all that remained was to tell (write) the last few stories that accompanied some of the special photos we had chosen.  My aunt opted to handwrite all of the captions and stories in the album.  We used a combination of black and tan pages, kept our décor simple and our embellishments few.  We tried to keep our decorations minimal so that they accompanied but didn't overpower the photos and words.

My aunt debuted the albums to our extended family at a get together this summer.  I wasn't able to attend.  However, I instructed my aunt to let the family know that I would take on the venture of digitally documenting everything we produced in the two-volume (80+ page) albums in digital format so it could be shared and duplicated for as many family members as would want to possess it.

We decided to scan and digitize every separate image in the album.  Each would have very detailed metadata added to it's photo file.  We would assure that all family members could access the photos and information those photos contained for generations to come.

We also decided that I would use the individual scanned elements to re-create every album page from the original album and make as close to a duplicate album as is possible.  The duplicate album could be printed as a real book and as many copies as were wanted could be produced.  It's a big job.

I have now finished scanning every item in the album.  I am correctly naming and dating every photo as a file with keywords, correct dates, photo tags, and searchable details.  Once complete, I will assure that those files are shared amongst the family in a long-term private digital photo sharing website.  I will then use those scans to create a custom album that will be produced and given to all family members.  WHEW!  I am sure I will not finish the project in the one week I am here visiting my aunt and her original copies of the album.  But, at least we are steps closer in the project and I will now sleep a bit easier knowing that there are safe, digital scans of these fabulous photos which are already backed up in multiple places both physically and in the cloud.

I will continue to share pieces of the process as I work through this photo venture.

Save Your Photos #21 of 30! Building Bridges with Photos!

Today begins a personal photo history venture.  Practice what you preach right? I've spent 20 days encouraging the wider world of readers to preserve and protect their family photo history and memorabilia...this week I will follow my own advice.

I have traveled from my home in Philadelphia to my aunt's "old Kentucky home" in Louisville - a trek I have made several times before to assist in documenting our family history.  This trip marks the culmination of a six year adventure in which my aunt and I have complied a priceless family photo album.  It could not have been completed if my own grandmother had not tirelessly photographed and labeled so many bits and pieces of her life and then wrote a book that detailed all the minutia of her personal family history.

I have traveled hundreds of miles to help digitize this family treasure so that it can be duplicated and shared with our entire family.  We will also save each individual element in the album in a photo archive to be shared and available to all of our generations from now until forever.

Stay tuned for snippets of this preservation adventure.

Save Your Photos #20 of 30! - Explore Capture Shoot

Explore - Capture - Shoot: It's on my bucket list.

I've never actually sat down to write a bucket list.  I have mixed feelings about it.  If I create a bucket list and then don't complete something on that list do I mark it down as a failure? I'm one of those people who doesn't like to write down goals because I don't want to disappoint myself or others if I don't complete a goal I set.

Just the origin of bucket list makes me feel a little uncomfortable.  I mean - stuff I wanna do before I "kick the bucket" is a bit depressing.  Rather I'd maybe have a "fill my life" list or a "while I live" list but what instead if I had an "explore capture shoot" list?

Explore: Travel - Visit - Go - Adventure - Escape

Capture:  Record, Write, See, Understand, Be part of, Experience, Preserve

Shoot: Photograph, Instagram, YouTube, Storybook, Video, Film

I wanted to be a world traveling, magazine feature article writing, photo journalist.  Really.  That was my original plan when I was just entering college and had decided to major in journalism.  That's not what I ended up doing.  But the idea of that never disappeared.  Maybe it's not too late. Maybe I just have to re-define what that looks like.

What if I were to take a year and spend every day Exploring, Capturing and Shooting... what if those three little words were to be the adventure that carried me off into new directions. How would I carry that out?

... not the same way I imagined as I entered college and not the way I re-imagined it a decade later but maybe in a new way, a 50-something way, an empty-nester social media, self-taught photographer blogger instagrammer way.

This idea has possibilities. I think I will try on this new mantra and see how it could maybe play out in my life - I like these three little words and how they could form a new adventure.

If I were to combine my early photojournalistic dreams, with my current memory preservationist profession and add in the Explore Capture Shoot mantra - drop those all into the same bucket and give it a stir I'm curious to think what that mixture might become.

Explore Capture Shoot...Explore Capture Shoot...Explore Capture Shoot...

I'm going to mull this idea over for a while.

Save Your Photos #19 of 30! Photo Challenge: Create Your Hometown History

Here's a photo challenge...and a chance to create history right where you are!

Having served on the board of my local historical society for a few years, I came to understand both the importance and the desire for photographic records of how our town looked throughout its history.

Our society amassed a large photo collection of our town of about 40,000.  During the time I served on the board I was amazed to learn how great the interest was in seeing how our town looked decades and even a century or more ago.  We constantly got requests from individuals looking to learn more about their homes but also from local businesses hoping to connect themselves to the history of their locations.  Many businesses were willing to pay hundreds of dollars for a single large print of their location to display on their walls or to decorate their eating establishments.

As I myself learned more about our local town history, I was surprised to find that a local shopping center had once been an airport, that the homes built across from my children's elementary school were built on what used to be a golf course and that the building at the top of my street used to be the local elementary school.  Had I grown up in my home, I would have gone to that school.  Where our new YMCA stands, a bubble gum factory once stood, some homes along busier streets are now businesses.  Streets, businesses and neighborhoods will change vastly over time.  

What were dirt streets with a trolly track down the middle of them are now two lane highways, what were farmsteads are now a couple blocks of homes, what once were pathways for horse carriages and sleighs, then early vehicles are now modern roads full of cars.  Even going back 40 years, most of the businesses a few blocks away have been replaced.

So - here's your challenge.  Be a photo journalist in your own home town.  Take photos of businesses along a stretch of road, of town buildings and restaurants.  Take photos of cars at intersections and of local roads during parades or other festivals, take pictures of the front of schools, of parks and recreation areas, etc.  Capture now what will surely in a few decades be treasured records of history - you might even capture a photo that someone would be willing to pay you for!

Create hometown history one photograph at a time.

Save Your Photos #18 of 30! Few Words Many Exposures

If you've been reading my Save Your Photos posts for the past 17 days, you will understand by now that I am indeed a fan of writing and documenting and storytelling.  So, today's words of photo wisdom might seem to completely contradict what I've been preaching.

Let me slant it this way...

I know a lot of people who rarely take photos - as I was snapping away, attempting to capture every single kid on the swim team at a high school meet, other parents sat calmly in the bleachers reading magazines, or chatting away with friends.  I was always amazed that they didn't have a camera at the ready every second!  So even though we have photo taking tools at our fingertips, many people still don't take them.  It's not that those people don't enjoy photos or wouldn't love looking at a photo album, they are just not programmed to be shutter bugs.  So to those people I will encourage many exposures - which for them is at the very least a few more than zero.

Likewise, when I have suggested writing voluminous and eloquent descriptions in story form to accompany every photo (LOL), I know there are a lot of folks out there who just won't do that. Their eyes have rolled and they have clicked away to the next blog.

So - let your words be few, but at least let there be that few.

For you who don't like writing, hate your handwriting, are reminded of horrible days in the classroom forced to put pen to paper, okay, I get it.

I spent many nights with the photo album ladies who attended the workshops at my house begging them to document SOMETHING in writing.  I even gave them prizes if they "journaled" on a page after putting the photos on it.  I had to redefine journaling for them.  Captions - facts - basics - names - dates.  

I know we all think that a vacation or event is so amazing that we will remember the name of the great restaurant where we ate or will easily visit the same tour company we used.  But, alas, we forget.  The details dim over time - even for those of us who are detail-minded.  And so, little bits and pieces of our lives disappear.

Thus, I stress and I beg - that if you are the memory keeper in your household and your forget to take photos and hate to write about them, pull out a photo album that you have - sit in a comfy chair, relax.  Look through the album, enjoy it - savor the memories.  Think how you feel about having those photo memories... and then, encourage yourself to make more of them - the kind that can live on so that you and many others can enjoy that same feeling.

At least if you won't write paragraphs - write a word.
At least if you aren't a photo fanatic - click your phone a few times.
You will be glad you did.

Save Your Photos #17 of 30! Tell Their Stories

When is the last time you sat down to write a story?

My kids love to hear the same stories over and over about their childhood. Many of them aren't written down because there aren't really any photos that inspired those stories.  Typically, I wrote about my kids when I was writing about pictures in a photo album.

There are some stories that we tell over and over - funny things the kids did when they were little, humorous things they said, habits they had.  We do talk about those things but they aren't recorded anywhere.

When we are all together, talking about the past, I think it's amazing how many things my children remember that I have totally forgotten - and I have a really good memory.  It's always then that I think, I should write them down.  But where would I write them so we can share them over and over again and not forget the funny little details?

Create a story page.  A story page might not have ANY photos.  It might be a list of their best memories of Halloween or things they did during a long car trip or even funny things they remember about each other.  Write these down and add them to an album.

Use family photos as prompts.  Ask your kids if they remember what was happening in those photos - what they remember.  Most of the stories in our album come from me, my reporting on what occured. But, I have a much different and more factual type of storytelling than my kids or my husband. Often, it's only my voice that the album is written in - but then I listen to the things they remember and I just KNOW that their stories need to be in there too.

Likewise, my kids LOVE it when I tell them stories about them that they don't remember.

There are bonds that form when you re-live stories together.  Tell your family stories and let your family tell them to you.  Then, write them down and save them in a place they can be read over and over again.

Let your photo albums live on and let them speak in many voices.

Save Your Photos #16 of 30! Have you asked for the memories?

One of the best ways to capture your family memories is to ask someone in an older generation to tell you stories.  Use photos as prompts.  Ask who, what, why, where and when.  Encourage storytelling. Record what is said.

Take notes - write down the memories you wish to save and add them to the back of a photo or into a photo album or document them and store them along with your photos in a digital cloud storage.

Audio Record - make a voice recording of the memories that are told by your relative have it transcribed.

Video Record - make a digital recording of the memories being related to you by your relative.  Transcribe the audio and preserve and archive the video.

If you are not nearby and cannot personally record the memories and stories told by your relative consider writing a list of questions and have the relative write, type, or verbally detail the answers to someone who can make sure the answers get recorded.

Use a soft stabilo pencil to write the basic details on the backs of photos that relatives can still identify.

Bring photos and memorabilia to a family reunion and ask relatives to identify anyone they know and to relate stories about family history.  Gauge the interest level of specific relatives who might have knowledge, stories or information about photos and previous generations - talk to them about helping you to preserve the knowledge they hold.

Consider hiring a personal historian or genealogist to help you hunt down the information and stories about your family memories.

Save Your Photos #14 of 30. Tell the Stories!

I don't watch a lot of TV shows.  But one show I happen to enjoy is the American Pickers.  If you aren't familiar with that show, it's about two guys, Mike Wolfe and Frank Fretz, from Iowa who drive around the USA in a big van searching down bits of rusty, historical antiques that they buy from people and re-sell to other people.  They do this out of both a desire for profitable commerce and a personal passion for preservation.  They love the old stuff that is no longer manufactured.  

However, what can increase an item in value is if the seller has a personal story that goes along with the item.  I have seen an object double or triple in value if there is a verifiable or personal story that can be essentially sold along with the piece.  I believe this is the same with photos.

Hereto is a comparison two types of photo albums, one plain (photos only, no words) and the other journaled (stories that accompany the photos).

For about a decade I hosted album making workshops in my home at least once each month.  At these occasions, I'd setup work tables, trashcans, provide food and beverages and invite over those women (though through the years we had a few men) who wished to create photo albums and tell their family stories.  Years of observation taught me the importance of story telling with regards to ones photos.

It always took the first half hour of the workshop for people to settle in, unpack their belongings and greet their friends.  Early conversations of the evening often included the sharing of the photos that would be worked into an album. 

Seatmates were seen holding piles of their photos and flipping through the pictures of vacations, birthdays, etc...  of the other women seated at their table.  This was a time of lots of discussion and verbalization.  Rarely did the looker know what was occurring in the photos.  There was always the need to ask questions, beg explanations and loads of stories were shared.  Whereas this is never a bad thing, to socialize over a stack of snapshots, it was something that required a lot of verbal explanations so that the viewer knew exactly what stories the photos were wanting to depict.

Often these discussions assisted the album maker in determining what needed to be written, explained and related on an album page accompanying the photos.  Sometimes the album maker asked questions of the tablemates wondering if the explanation was clear or if more details needed to be added.  There was a great amount of information sharing.  I knew it to be true that some people took vacations to spots they had first discovered when looking at someone else's photos.

Photos and stories accompanied one another in the albums these women created.

Other times I'd see someone at a friend's house flipping through a photo album with only pictures, no words or "journaling."  There was rarely discussion if the album owner wasn't seated right next to the album viewer in order to offer explanations. Basically, the viewer wasn't as interested in the photos because they were sure of what they were looking at.  They might not know where the photos were taken or what the occasion was.  Without this additional information, the album was sometimes quickly put down before the viewer had finished looking all the way to the end.

Now, the reason I notices this happening is because I looked for it.  Always.  I was constantly trying to convince myself that the workshop time I provided for the women who came to my house to make photo albums was necessary and important.  I wanted to know that the time I spent opening my home to them was worthwhile, and thus, seeing the way a "plain" album was viewed as opposed to a "storied" album, I validated that a photo album that also contained stories and titles and captions held more interest to the viewer.

I have come to firmly believe - though I can still only offer it as an opinion based on personal observations - that telling stories to accompany a photo is the way to make the photo truly live on into the future.  The photos alone without the stories behind them are often just empty pictures of faces of unknown people - or at least they are at risk of being such to the future generations that encounter them. 

One of the most difficult things for me in my job as a personal photo organizer is when a family wishes to have me custom design a photo album for them that contains no stories, titles, or captions.  These clean, modern albums are beautiful - and certainly easier for me to design than ones that require me to spend hours adding a client's verbage to the album in written form.  So I design albums any way a client requests, but I'm always happy to spend as much time getting a cleint's stories presented in an album, regardless of how much editing it might require, as I do designing how the photos looks on the page.

If creating a photo album on your own is too overwhelming or you feel you don't have the time or the skill or even the desire to learn how to make one, a personal photo organizer can custom design one specifically for you - typically, they design albums according to your style preferences.  I love creating custom albums for families - if you need help creating one, contact me.

Save Your Photos #13 of 30! - Your own font!

So often when working with collections of old memorabilia, items are most precious when they contain a relative's original handwriting.

Handwriting one's thoughts and memories is often replaced by computer typing in our current digital age.  Take a little time to use a pen and paper.  Scan your original penmanship - it will be a treasure for your future generations.

I used to ask my clients which letters they opened first when they would bring in the mail, the typewritten label or the handwritten card...

I used to ask my clients why they'd keep the recipe card written by their great grandmothers and covered with the splatters and splotches from her kitchen rather than re-type it so it's fresh and new and easier to read.

There is just something about an item penned in an original hand.

Get writing! (use cursive, apparently it's a dying art).

Save Your Photos #12 of 30 - Techno-fruit!

We live in the information age.  It is wonderfully overwhelming.  Yes, that is an oxymoron and I meant it!

I have always loved technology.  The earliest PC in the Smithsonian (A Digital Equipment Corporation machine) is the exact same one I brought home to my apartment to log-in to their intranet (internal network) and work from home on a 96 baud modem or some such - before the world wide web existed.  I have been obsessed with computers and technology ever since.

I also still love non-technological information like newspapers and books.

There is so much information available to us in any one given day that we would not EVER in one single day be able to absorb it all - not even close!!!

As much as I love all of the technology and information I have at my fingertips, it also overwhelms me.  Just to keep up with the daily newspaper (which I still read and love in paper form), magazines, TV news, late night shows, internet news, local newspapers, the mail, social media websites and blogs, ideas on pinterest and ravelry, texts on my cell phone, my paper and phone calendars, etc etc etc is absolutely an impossible task.  This in some ways makes me sad - I'm missing so much! But I also feel overwhelmed... there is too much to know.

I think it's the same with photos - we have cameras and iphones and ipads and PCs, blogs, apps, external hard drives, cloud storage, photo albums, framed prints, digital albums, instagram, twitter, snapchat, facebook, flickr, dropbox, Forever, Mylio, Shutterfly, and on and on and too many more to even mention.  That entire list offers someplace to do something with your photos.

I find that for most people, the whole process is so overwhelming and their photos are backed up and stored and shared and saved and snapped in so many places and on so many devices that it's simply impossible to think about knocking the whole collection into place, to organize it, pare it down, treat it with care, enjoy it, savor it, share it - it's just too much already!!!!! AHHHHHH! Help!

By the time people contact me for help - they are about ready to pull out their hair when they think of their photo collections jumbled all about in their lives.  I get it - I understand - I feel your pain - but mostly I want to help.

I can help you take tiny bites out of all your photo woes until the entire fruit is consumed and you are happy and sated and with a belly full of delicious photo calories...  it was much easier when Apple and Blackberry were just fruits - but our world is more complex now - and I am here to help you sort it all out.  Feeling overwhelmed?  Contact a personal photo organizer today.  Tame your fruit.

Save Your Photos #11 of 30 - Sept 11 tribute

Those who were born after Sept 11, 2001, or were very young at that time might ask, "Where were you when the planes crashed into the twin towers in NYC?"  In the same way, we may have asked our relatives where they were when Kennedy was shot or when Pearl Harbor was attacked.  I have been asked where I was during the Challenger Space Shuttle Disaster.  It's hard for people who weren't around during a major event in human history to imagine what it was like for those who were.

There are loads of photos from that day - planes crashing into buildings, smoke pouring from the windows of the towers, people running through streets covered with ash.  Even though I live only 1.5 hours from NYC, 2 hours from the Pentagon and 4 hours from the crash of Flight 93, I don't have photos from those events or even from that day.

However, I have a picture of that day permanently painted in my thoughts.  I have a clear memory of how I felt as it was all developing, of how surreal it was to see in real-time what was so horrible and unbelievable and scary.  It was so strange to think that things were unfolding as I watched - LIVE.  In the afternoon, when my children had returned home from school, I sat down and wrote.  What I wrote is forever captured in my mind as a picture. 

Later, I saw that the Philadelphia Inquirer was looking for submissions from people in the area about their experience that day - and so, I submitted what I had written and strangely enough - it was printed.

My article describes the picture that will ever be etched in my mind when I remember September 11th.  It is a picture of innocence in a world that was experiencing horror and the divergence between the innocent and the horror cannot be erased from my thoughts about that day.

Here is the brief submission that was printed in the Philadelphia Inquirer those 14 years ago:

Horror on a Beautiful Day

Yesterday was September 11, 2001.  It was a beautiful day.  The sky was a vivid blue.  Birds sang, crickets buzzed.  Trees swayed gently in the cool breeze.  It was a day to delight in the experience of ordinary beauty.

I'm a stay-at-home mom.  After my last child left for school, I sat down with coffee and the newspaper - just like every day.  The phone rang.  My husband said, "Turn on the news."

The TV is never on during the day but yesterday, I stood in front of TV-news the entire day.  I felt numb.  The crash into the Pentagon made it personal.  My dad sometimes worked there and my brothers in law work across the street.  An hour of dead lines and fast busy signals to my dad's cell caused me to panic.  "Dad, get out of there!" I shouted when he finally answered.  I could barely register his reply, "I'm at home; I didn't go in today." A dead car battery had delayed him.

My dad's chances of being in a meeting at the Pentagon were real but not certain.  Eerily, I tried to perceive the hundreds who knew their relatives were on hijacked planes.  I attempted to fathom the families of thousands who work in or around the twin towers.  My panic was minuscule compared to the horrified knowledge and consuming dread of those whose lives would be imprinted in ways I cannot comprehend.

At kindergarten pick-up, the day's devastation seemed unreal.  The tree-lined walkway fronting the school was calm.  Perfect, white, puffy clouds floated above.  Children were cheerful, smiling; running to their parents armed with Tempra-painted pictures and juggling brightly colored backpacks.

Overcome by innocence, we grasped the open hands of children, holding them tighter, noticing the slippery wetness between our palms.  Leaving school, I felt the breeze, noted the sky.  It was a beautiful day.

Save Your Photos #10 of 30!

In honor of Save Your Photos Day, I have been posting a little bit of photo organizing inspiration and other little snippets every day this month.  Today marks exactly 1/3 of the way through the month and so far, not a day missed.  I hope the posts have been inspirational and given you new things to think about with respect to your own photos.

We have established that we take A LOT of photos these days - it's so easy - why not.  But, having a huge volume of photos to process, edit, name, tag, organize, backup, archive, print, display etc can be more than overwhelming.  So - let me offer a few ways to lighten your load, simplify your photo collection.

1.  TOSS - Did you know you can throw away photos?  Yes, you can.  Back in the film-develop-print days we often printed doubles.  But because we couldn't see a photo until we got the film developed, we took LOTS of photos of the same thing to assure that we captured a perfect moment.  And then we took our rolls of film in for development and got doubles.  It's okay to throw away some or many of those photos... I mean if you really don't want to that's okay too - but right here and now I give you permission to put a photo in the trash...  Likewise, with digital cameras, we don't have to worry about using up film so again, we take a ton of photos to guarantee success.  Throwing a digital photo in the trash requires a delete button - on photo apps it often looks like a little trash can.  It's there for a reason - you are allowed to use it.

2. A-Quality photos.  I do a lot (I mean a whole lot) of scanning for people.  Meaning, I take their print photos that are their ONLY copy of a photo and I run it through a scanner to make a duplicate or digital copy of that photo.  That way, if something happens to the original, there is another copy - and it can be used to create a new print copy of the photo as well.  The digital copy can be duplicated and stored in several places to assure its safety.  So, the question always arises before I begin a scanning job for a client - what do you want me to scan?  Usually, a client chooses either their A-Photos only - or the A&B photos.

A - stands for Album.  The very best of your photos.  The ones you'd want to print or include in an album.  A-one, top quality.  Sometimes clients can't afford to have me scan every photo they own.  This is where designating A-quality photos is important.  We opt to scan only the best ones.

Again, in the digital world, photo organizing packages often allow you to rate your photos - assign them a grade or enable you to indicate your favorites.  Many of my clients - especially ones who pay for their backup storage spaces - put only their A-quality photos up in their permanent cloud storage.  I do.  I don't want my family to have to dredge through all the photos to find the best ones, I put the very best ones in my most permanent and secure location.

B - stands for Box.  A photo that you don't want to delete but it's not your very best might just get to stay in your photo box but you don't want to pay someone to scan it and you don't want to pay for it to be stored in the cloud.  These are B photos.  Some clients like me to scan all the A photos and all the B photos - it's your choice - but just know it's a choice.

3.  Time.  Consider how much time you have to organize and backup and name and tag and use your photos.  Fewer photos means it takes you less time.

All of this adds up to simplification.  Simplify your photos - simplify your life - simplify the time and energy it takes to manage your photo collection.  The more you simplify, the more time you have to spend time on the photos that matter the most - not to mention the time it allows you to spend living your life rather than organizing your photos.

I spend a lot of time helping clients to SIMPLIFY their photo collections - I can help you too!

Save Your Photos #9 of 30!

How often have you used your phone camera to snap a bit of information?  I do it all the time.  I take photos of wine bottle labels and beers that I want to remember once I realize I love the taste of some new brew I've tried. I snap photos of clothes or product labels to remember them for style or price.  I photograph signs - on the street, in museums, on historic buildings etc.. so I can remember what I heard, learned or saw.

These INFO photos get deleted if they were meant to be temporary informational bits but often they get cataloged along with the rest of my photos and even added to albums if they assist in the storytelling process, or offer unique details.

I've taken these "informational photos" throughout my life and especially when traveling. I even took information photos with my "regular camera" and yes, I developed the pictures, and added them to albums and journals.  

However, in places I wouldn't necessarily carry my DSLR (like a dinner table, a dressing room or a store), I almost ALWAYS have my iphone.  Not having to keep all the details of my travels or shopping in my head, frees me from the minutiae I used to attempt to stuff into my brain.  I no longer have to lug home heavy and voluminous paper travel guides and brochures that I hauled around when I traveled just so I could bring them home and cut them apart to add to a scrapbook or re-read to remind myself of details of my trip I'd forgotten..

The save button icon I added to the quote depicts my immediate reaction to the sentiment in the picture above -  that a picture can preserve information that used to only be included in text documents.  Now my photos serve to capture both documents (text) and images... and both can be valuable.

Remember to choose a safe service to which your phone photos can be constantly backed up into a cloud service, especially when traveling.  If your phone is lost or stolen or falls in a lake or something, at least the memories will remain in the world wide web.

Need to learn more about how to select a cloud service so your phone photos will automatically backup without you having to do anything?  Contact a personal photo organizer.

Save Your Photos #8 of 30!

A tale of two families (as told by a professional organizer):

Family #1:  Two brothers and one sister met with a professional home organizer to discuss how to go about clearing their parents' home for sale.  The mom had been a widow and had passed away leaving a family home filled with treasures and belongings.  When reviewing the boxed items in the attic, the family came across two huge photo albums.  The albums were large, over-sized, old.  The pages were black but peeling and flaking away with age.  Some photos had slipped from their corner mountings.  The albums contained lots of writing as did the backs of many photos.  The text was in the creator's original handwriting which had begun to fade but was still legible.  The siblings had never seen the albums or the photos before.

Looking through the albums, they realized that it was photos and stories about all of their father's relatives.  The handwritten text listed the names of the people in the photos,  it explained where the photos were taken and often told stories or included quotes or memories.  The family was shocked and astounded by what they had found.  Though tattered and clearly at risk of falling apart, the fragile album was seen as a family treasure.  Unsure how to divide up the two albums between the three siblings, tense conversations occurred. Who would keep these heirlooms? Would they be separated or kept together? How would they pass them down?

Luckily, the organizer knew a photo organizer who specialized in digitization and could re-create the album offering the family as many copies of the digital version of the album as they wanted.  The digital copies contained scanned photos and even preserved the text, much of it in the original handwriting.  The family was blown away - and the presentation of the albums brought forth tears of joy.  No one cared who ended up with the originals once they knew that all family members could have a copy of the valuable keepsake.  The memories were priceless.

Family #2:  The only son lived on the other side of the country from his dad who was moving into a nursing home having been struck with Alzheimer's.  When clearing out his dad's stuff with the help of the same professional organizer who had helped family #1, two plastic bins of photos were discovered by the organizer.  The organizer was excited by the discovery and hurried to share the boxes with her client.  The client looked through the photos - some of them dating to the 1800s.  Most of them quite old.

The organizer related the story of family #1 - at least to explain how the photos could be made into an album and shared with other relatives.  The client picked up a few handfuls of photos and said, "I have no idea who these people are."  The photos had no writing on the back, very few had dates.  There were no written descriptions.  The client showed the photos to his dad but his dad just stared at them blankly, too far encumbered by memory loss to make identifications.

The organizer asked about other family members who might know how to identify the photos.  The client said something to the effect of: I don't really know who I'd ask.  These photos are kind of worthless to me.  You can throw them away or sell them if you think the old ones are worth anything.

The moral of the stories is that the photos found by family members and identified with stories and names and dates were viewed as priceless... the ones just thrown in a box with no written documentation were deemed trash.  What will be the fate of your photos?  Are they treasures or are they trash?  When you are not around to identify, organize and label them - will they matter to anyone?  If someone finds them with identification and stories attached will that change their value?  Think about it - decide if it's time to preserve your family photos now.

Personal photo organizers can help.  Leave treasured memories for you family - make your photos matter.

Sher Your Scraps #7 of 30!

The multitude of ways we share photos these days is mind boggling.  All judgement aside, it's a pretty wow-ing idea if you sit and think about everything we do with social media these days.  Can we even remember back to the days when social media photo sharing didn't exist? I'm over 50 and it's even hard for an old gal like me to remember when it wasn't a thing.

The downside - or upside depending on how you look at it - of sharing photos this way is both their possible permanence in the foreverland of the internet or their disappearance completely from our lives.  

My husband cannot understand the infatuation with SNAPCHAT because the photo disappears.  Unless someone screen captures it on a phone or computer while viewing - it goes away.  Two of my kids on the otherhand love the lack of permanence that SNAPCHAT brings them.  Plus it's an app that parents haven't taken over from the younger generation - yet. HAHAHA  Some of us can't stand the idea that our photos would disappear, others love it.

All that said, one thing to consider about sharing photos on social websites are the possible safety and privacy issues associated with posting your lovely mug (and those of your relatives) all over the world wide web.  Be aware of your rights to your photos once posted - each site is different.  Each site is goverened by their own set of rules about how they can use your photos- some of those policies are affected by privacy settings that they allow you to set - others don't give you any options to put stricter policies in effect.  You should however, at least be aware of such rules before you post - and be consigned to the strings that may come attached with photo-sharing social media and websites.

Until then, I'm taking your best guesses...how long before Facebook hits 10 billion uploads a month?

Save Your Photos #6 of 30!

I have been formally presenting the words above to everyone who would hear me since 2001.

In an effort to assist my french exchange student, Marion, to tell the story of the year she lived with us in the USA, I wanted to help her create a photo album.  I wanted more than just a regular album with photos. I wanted a place where she could tell her stories and include non-photo memorabilia to illustrate everything she experienced while she was here.  In my effort to find just the right materials for her to create such an album I discovered Creative Memories.

Though I found Creative Memories as part of a product search, I was much more influenced by the mission behind their products - encouraging people to create memorable photo albums full of stories.

For 12 years I shared the statement in the photo above with everyone who would listen.  And a lot of people listened.  I cannot count how many people heard what I had to say, took those words to heart and put them into practice.  I have been honored for over a decade to be able to guide, encourage and teach so many people about preserving their photo memories.  My time spent with Creative Memories birthed the eternal Memory Preservationist in me.

Though the original Creative Memories - from whom I quote - has since gone out of business, (a new Creative Memories has taken its place), the act of creating photo albums to preserve, enrich and inspire never did.  Preservation Pix, the business I founded, is a direct result of all I learned to love about helping people preserve their photos and stories.  As a "memory preservationist" or "photo solutions specialist" I was practicing the duties of what the industry now refers to as a personal photo organizer.  Today - as this industry has expanded, I offer a great deal more services than I did in 2001 but ultimately the core mission of my job is still the same.

Every day - with every client - I still get to help people preserve, enrich and inspire.  And I couldn't be happier doing it.

Save Your Photos #5 of 30!

The amount of photos we take these days astounds me.  It's cool - but it's crazy to think about.  I love this photo of ancient intimates hanging on a line.  I'm not even sure it's real - it's probably staged to look old, but it reminds me of how photos can capture everyday things, mundane items, regular stuff...

We use our cameras-phones to freeze time! Groovy right?  We are capturing pictures of things that tell the story of everything in our lives.

When I watch old movies, I always look at what's in the scene behind the actors - what's sitting around on the tables, what technology is in the frame, what clothes people are wearing, what the cars and houses and city streets look like, what's on the billboards and the signs.  Likewise, when I'm helping clients to organize older photos from decades past, I love to peek into the backgrounds of the photos - to look beyond the smiling faces and the posed groups - to see what stories the every day world has to tell.

When I look back through my own family photos - the ones from when I was little, I search for the things I remember from the houses I used to visit - like seeing my grandmother's canisters lined up on the kitchen counter where I remember baking cookies with my aunt, like seeing a toy I remember playing with piled on a bookshelf in the background of a photo of my brother or seeing the car I helped my grandfather wash in the driveway of their house.

There are so many memories in the backgrounds of photos - in the simple objects that weren't the intended subjects of the photos.  I love the history they tell and the decades they document - even if it was an unintentional part of the memory keeping.

Today - I love to take photos of regular things - someone mowing a yard, a letter written in cursive,  silverware lined up in a drawer - items in my refrigerator - mail sitting in a basket - buildings in my neighborhood - street signs - cars in the driveway - clothes on the line - items on my desk, etc etc  I feel like I'm documenting history for the future generations - my present day will be their past, and the stuff I use and touch every day may look strange and wonderful to them.

A few years back I made a "DAY TO DAY" album.  I took one photo every day for 365 days.  Often, the pressure of taking a photo a day meant that I took photos of very mundane things.  At first that concept bothered me, that I would waste space printing a photo of "nothing" because I hadn't taken a "real" photo that day.  But later, when the album was done and I looked back, I love that the album is a blend of  "planned" photos and every day objects.  I like the idea that my album is a history of one year in my life - one regular, every day year and once I realized I was capturing unique images that depict the very real and regular bits of mylife, the album was more special.

So since we snap as many photos every two minutes as were taken during an entire century, realize that we are capturing a unique part of our culture and history every 120 seconds and snap away!

Save Your Photos #4 of 30

Getting your photo collection under control can seem like an overwhelming process.  Start with a master plan.  A personal photo organizer can help you to create a master plan that you can work from.  Any good plan can be broken down into steps. Decide which steps you plan to tackle personally, or work together with a photo organizers.  If you would rather offer direction and have someone else do the work, a photo organizer can take the entire job off your hands.

As a photo organizer, when I work with clients to help them organize print photos or present them with an organized photo box full of their memories or a custom designed photo album, they are often so happy they cry!

Photos invoke powerful memories of family, friends, events, etc... 

Clients have called me letting me know they are losing sleep because their photos are so scattered they don't know what to do.  Helping them bring control the chaos and to get their photo collection into order allows them not only peace of mind and restful nights, but also joy from seeing photos that were so long hidden away.

Want to get started putting your photos in order? Hire a personal photo organizer.   Work one-on-one with an organizer so you have someone to guide you while you are working.  Or, hire the organizer to complete the steps in the that you don't feel comfortable doing yourself.

When you see one of your kids grabbing a photo album and sitting down with it, pointing at photos, re-living memories and laughing at childhood antics, you will be glad you took the steps to preserve your memories.  I'm not saying it will be easy, but it will DEFINITELY be worth it.

Need help finding an organizer in your area, consult the Association of Personal Photo Organizers.  If you are in the Baltimore or Philadelphia areas, contact Preservation Pix.