What to do with old photos?
I have a photo album full of snapshots of my grandmother's before she married my grandfather. Very few of them are labeled so I haven't a clue who is in them. I do recognize grandma in some but not many. My problem is this. What do I do with them? I am running out of storage space, trying to clean things up before I have to pass all my "stuff" to my DD. I would feel awful throwing them out. If anyone else has solved this problem, please tell me what you did! All suggestions are welcome. Thank you
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Re: What to do with old photos?
I'm not sure why you are so short of storage space that you cannot find space for one vintage photo album, and I don't know what a DD is.
However if you are truly too short of space then maybe see if the local museum/history society/archive is prepared to have them.
Or what about passing it to another family member? Or to another genealogist?
Fortunately we are lucky enough to live in a time when you can have give the piccys away and still effectively have the access anytime to all the images while not having to take up any physical space. You can still keep copies of all the pics by scanning them all into your computer or even uploading them to your tree. Scanners are very cheap now, and many printers do it anyway. Certainly it is very worthwhile writing identifications you do know on the reverse of the photos and adding some notes to the photo album about age of the photos, whose collection it was, the area where most or all the photos were probably taken, family notes etc etc.
Possibly if you do pass the photos to someone new, perhaps a fresh pair of eyes on the photos might see some new details or new people involved might think of some new leads to try to find out who the other people are.
Regards
Neil
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Re: What to do with old photos?
I would find someone who has your grandmother in their tree and ask if they can identify any of the people. Or maybe one of them would like to have the album. Recently I made contact with a relative of the husband of my great aunt. She had my great Aunt's photo album and hadn't a clue with the poeple were. So...she scanned and sent me the pictures. Some, I cannot yet identify, but others were my grandma, great grandma, aunts, great aunts, and My MOTHER!!! What a joyous day that was for me. Please don't throw them away. There is someone out there craving those pictures.
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Re: What to do with old photos?
I so agree with this as I am one who craves those old family photos!! :) Another option is to see if someone(maybe your daughter) can help you to put them in cloud storage. That is something that can be very easy and inexpensive and will be there for anyone else who comes along and you would like to show them off. Then you can go ahead and give the album to anyone you would like. Definitely keep it in the family though!
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Re: What to do with old photos?
One bit of advice: scan them to the highest resolution that you can afford to store, save them as TIF files. These will not be as "lossy" as JPG files. Then when you care to distribute them, convert them to JPG files at a lower resolution - at least you will have better quality files as a backup.
One question I do have. With B&W photos, scan those to full color (saving the sepia tone and discoloring) or save as B&W?
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Re: What to do with old photos?
I always scan full color. I like to have every detail as I see it in my hand.
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