I have about 2500 photos up with more to go. Grandfather gave me tons of his old photos. There are more in the family I'd like to get.

I'd recommend flickr they give you a Terabyte free and lots of tools to organize and share. Family can comment flag and favourite photos too.

and has tons of pictures of my deceased dad and grandparents. I have the flu now and don't feel up to doing it now, but in another couple of days I will take care of it. Merry Christnas to you and yours and a happy New Year!

I once did a job for a client that ended up being her and her brother's entire lives- I scanned, color corrected, and de-scratched over 30 years worth of photos and slides. I know it seems slightly voyeuristic, but I got to watch a young girl grow up and become a beautiful woman- and she paid me very well for it!

I feel the same scanning in my mother's highschool photos from her time in Taiwan. She seemed sooo happy compared to today

I've also corrected and descratched a lot of it. I have a dedicated slide and negative scanner I picked up from my uncle to do some of it.
.

Memories such as what you got are part of the past of all of us. Many of us have few, if any, photos of our past and some have none at all. We need to preserve all photos it is a time we cannot capture again. The clothes,the background be it studio or indoors or out and perhaps an event. Also the vehicles,bicycles,toys--the amount of history is so important and that doesn't even include families! To see such family members--many may be total strangers except their names but you can always feel a bit closer to them when you have such photos.
I used to look at old books as a child and was fascinated by the old photos. Some were taken professionally and others were taken at picnics or formal occasions. I loved looking at the locations and the clothes and the faces--those faces always locked in time and I wondered what would they think of all the "new gadgets" we have today,the casual clothes we wear and how we travel.
Have fun on your great project. It will benefit future generations of your family.

I got to watch her and dad grow up, live through WWII, build a house, and have six children. Doing this is a great way to learn things about your family that you never realized before. I gained a greater understanding of my parents' lives as I took advantage of the opportunity to really LOOK at those old photos.

Now I get to get a bit closer to the beginning of my heritage. I'm sure I'll learn even more before I'm done.

so they load/run in chronological order? or some other order you might desire?

What works for you? or anyone with experience at this? Am I overlooking something simple?

I am scanning my old slides and family photos. I haven't found a satisfactory naming convention yet. Year/month/day followed by a general description then a number is useful for more recent pics. (e.g., 2013-12-25 Xmas01.jpg - sometimes with a special photo I add a name, e.g., 2013-12-25 Xmas 01 Santa.jpg)

But it gets more complicated when working with very old family pics with no idea of the dates. Or old slides and no certainty of the year (some have printed dates on the mounts, some don't, and my memory is not what it used to be).

Thanks for any help/ideas on this. I'm about to tackle a slide tray of my Christmas shots of my kids from the 1960s/70s and would love to start off this year of scanning with a good naming system.

Wat

Spill your Starbucks on the photos!



J/K...be careful!

Happy for you. this inspires me to tackle the half dozen boxes in my storage area, smile.

I recently saw two pictures of one of my great-grandfathers for the first time, and it meant so much to me. I only knew one of my grandparents, so I really value any pics and information I can get.

For yourself, have three copies of every image. One in the computer, one on a backup drive (usually external drive), and (importantly) one copy off-site to guard against house fire or burglary.

Using my mother's photos, I created a DVD slideshow, and gave them to all my family members as gifts.

Now I get to do it again.

I've always wondered about that. Did they smile less in general? Sure, they didn't have a lot of the fixings of a more advanced civilization, but they also did not have it's trappings. Or was it cultural? Photographs were a recent invention. Hmmm, now that I think of it, what about paintings?

I too was delegated scanner of family photos. It was a few years ago when I was handed a big canvas bag of two boxes & some envelopes. I've done it in small pieces. It's fun.

Anyway, Merry Christmas to you, P#6! Glad you're happy!

Nice to see some DUers around this evening!

during the long exposure. It wasn't until faster film was created that "Smile at the birdie" came around.

I know very little of photography, except that if I want really nice shot of something, buy an image that is already out there, or pay someone to take it for you.

Bad teeth.
Also there was a time in the 1850s till the 1900s that people would have professional photographers take pictures of their dead love ones posing with their live relatives. Reason being that a lot of people did not have any pictures of their loved ones while their were alive so before they buried them, they wanted a picture. It stopped when people could use the Kodak camera to photograph their loved ones alive.

It's creeping me out & making me laugh at the same time. In a million years I don't think I would ever have thought to do that, even in those times.

He died before I was born, so I never knew him, but my dad says he wasn't like that at all...he was witty and fun-loving. However, he felt that having a photograph made was a serious occasion, and apparently a lot of people shared his view in those days. After all, it wasn't a common thing to do. He was aware that people were starting to "say cheese," "smile for the camera," etc., but according to my dad, he thought that it was a passing fad and that those people would feel foolish someday when they looked at pictures of themselves grinning at nothing in particular.

I finally got around to scanning all the old negatives that came from my grandmother's attic. I scanned several trays of slides at my cousin's while I was babysitting.

that sounds like a fabulous combo to me! Enjoy going through all that history!

Works for me!

They range form 1953 until 1976.

My Mom was looking at the slides on the disc, and she got all teary-eyed.

MY uncle put our home movies onto VHS, (I put the VHS onto DVD,) but my uncle was rather sloppy and much of the movies are out of focus.

The home movies went from 1955 until 1980.

To see myself as a little baby and as a toddler, is that ever something.

I'd also enjoy seeing any old photos you'd care to share. Odds are many others would too.

There used to be a great website called My Parents Were Hot! or something like that. A guy started posting flattering pictures of his parents in their salad years, and others followed suit. I don't know if it's still up.

I think this tells it all.

How wonderful for you! I'm thrilled to see what a great day you had...

And all those pictures! Wow.

Have a great time!

And you KNOW I'd love to see whatever you want to post!

good time with your family.

I need to organize the photos I have and scan them and LABEL them for my kids. I have very few from my childhood and the ones of my parents/grandparents are scarce as well. But they are so cool to see.

Here's to coffee and old photos!

... it definitely needs to be preserved and shared.

-- Mal

My sister and I were at our Aunt's house going through old family pics, most we'd seen before, but there was a secret stash of photos that even my Aunt had never seen. We were alternating between amazement, laughter and tears for hours.
Also, we found out that one of our 1st cousins may have a South Korean sibling.

it started w/ a $5 album at an antique store. i actively look for black + white pictures + albums. and after 10+ years of estate sales, i have several albums + a crammed newer album of old photos. and then i got some older color pics.

Try to identify as many people as possible.

Archivists recommend scanning to TIFF format with the goal of a final size of at least 5x7" at 600 dpi (3000x4200 pixels). That is from the guy at the Photo Archives for the state of Florida. He recently scanned much of one of our family albums to add to the Florida Memory Project. http://www.floridamemory.com/photographiccollection/collections/ So far they have not added my pictures to their online collections.

One disadvantage of TIFFs (aside from the size) is that you cannot attach the information about the photo to the digital file. I like converting to JPG so I can attach as much info as possible in the IPTC data.

I put some of my albums on my website, using jAlbum to create web albums pages. jAlbum can pick up the IPTC data and put it as captions on the pages - it makes it really easy to make very good looking presentations of your photo collections. jAlbum started as open source but now has gone commercial. I find it worth the $39 because of the time it saves me to get the pictures and information online.