Tips on organizing/sharing large number of very old family photos

[Anonymous]

My grandfather died last year and I've been given the task of going through a huge tub of old family photos and finding a way to share them among various siblings and cousins. There are many truly wonderful photos there, and I am planning on getting a bunch of them scanned and put onto CDs, and possibly eventually making a nice book out of them. But there are hundreds and hundreds of pictures and not all of them are particularly great. Many are in bad shape or just out of focus or weren't that great to start with. There are also unfortunately a good number of pictures of people who I presume were related to us at some point but sadly nobody who is still alive can identify them. And of course they are all out of order and just stuffed in a box.

Any thoughts on how to approach this? Do I have all of the pics scanned for posterity even if I have no idea who is in them? Or even if they were not that great to start with? Then once we scan, how do we go about dividing up the originals between 4 cousins?

[Anonymous]

If that were my collection I would set up a few piles. First up would be to go through and sort them with all of the bad ones going directly in the trash, all of the exceptionally good ones going in a "share" pile and the mediocre ones in the middle pile. I would then go through the middle pile with fresh eyes. Again, any standout ones should go into the share pile and then try to sort the remaining ones into family groupings. Namely each family of cousins gets their own pile with pictures of their particular family in it. You will likely be left with a large pile of folks you can't name. This is where you use your cousins and other people to see if they can identify anyone. When you've done the best you can, have that iDisk or something made with the best one so that you can share them. I would also preserve the originals in a photo box as well. The biggest thing is not to be afraid of throwing away the bad photos. Pictures of the back of someone's head are no good to anybody.

[Anonymous]

Don't throw away any photos! (Sorry, I'm a historian.)

I would scan all the photos. If there is information on the back of the photo, then scan both front and back. Save the photos with a descriptive name. Store them in multiple places and formats. You could then put them on a private flickr site, or something similar, and ask the rest of the family to help with tagging. If you all get together for the holidays or family reunions, have a computer set up so that people can look at the pictures together. People working together often remember things/people that individuals do not, and the more tech savvy can help the less tech savvy. You can get the young people in the family to do the computer stuff, while the older people talk about the pictures.

In terms of dividing up the actual photos, I think that will be much easier to do in person, where you can just sort and negotiate. You could have everyone look at the online photos and tell you which originals they want, but I think that would be much more time consuming and complicated.

If you save the photos on CD, choose a CD labelled "archival quality" and know that even those CDs often don't last more than 10 years.

[Anonymous]

NP here; also interested in this topic as DH and I have many, many old family photos too.

I get the scanning part but my question is what to do with the photos themselves. After I scan, should I then toss them? Even though the originals are 60, 70 years old, or older?

[Anonymous]

I repeat, do not throw away the originals!

When the Revolution/Peak Oil/Zombie Attack/Apocalypse finally comes, you will not have access to photos stored on your computer or in the cloud. Seriously, if they're your photos you can do whatever you want with them, but the original does have a historical value beyond that of any copy, and, for me, more sentimental value as well.

[Anonymous]

I would organize them into categories or groups however you can. If possible, by year/decade with a catchall for unknown. Then have them all scanned in groups. Even the bad ones. Look for a local service that does it. Maybe start a separate post to ask for recommendations.

I would then upload them to SmugMug. It's a fantastic photo-sharing website -- I believe it's free for the basic service and a small annual fee for the upgrade (we opted for the upgrade so we could include videos of our kids in addition to photos.)

Here's why Smugmug is great: it's very easy to create different galleries and share photos on-line. You can even set things so others can download the photos to their own computer from Smugmug (free to them and very easy.) You can use a password to keep everything hidden from Google searches but still accessible to family. And you can adjust the settings so your family members can edit the titles or notes to identify people in the photos and/or add comments or even memories, so it can be a dynamic shared photo album. Finally, depending on what information people add, you can easily move photos from one gallery to another to organize them better.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Thank you so much for the super helpful replies! Lots of great suggestions.

[Anonymous]

If its a fairly large Photo collection and you will be adding to it or changing it - I suggest http://inmyphotofolder.com/ - They have an application that you install that will take care of all the uploading for you. The site also provides you with special links you can send to family and friends - and they can view the pictures without having to create an account.

[Anonymous]

Despite what the historian said, I'd throw out the ones that are way out of focus or really blurry or just a picture of trees somewhere in the midwest taken between 1920 and 1960, you know?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Despite what the historian said, I'd throw out the ones that are way out of focus or really blurry or just a picture of trees somewhere in the midwest taken between 1920 and 1960, you know?

Me, too. Remember that old photos were taken blind, without knowing if the conditions were right or the pictures would come out until the film was developed. There is a lot of crap out there, and we have SO much documentation of so many things now. I'd save the really old ones - when photos were less common - and anything recognizably documenting people, technology, or interiors/exteriors of buildings still standing. If the photo of the back of your great-aunt's head is also the only one documenting the decorative details on the front porch, keep it.

Tagging is really, really important. Tag with every detail that might be relevant, and be consistent - provide a key to tagging terms for others to use.

Of course save the originals, and have the best photos professionally reprinted/restored as necessary so that originals are not on display.

[Anonymous]

You can go to a place like Kinkos and do the scanning yourself. It's a lot cheaper than paying a professional photo company to do it. In fact, we paid a professional photo company to do some of our photos, and we can't tell the difference. You do have to fiddle with the scanner, though, so you get the highest resolution. Then you can bring the scanned photos into Photoshop to crop them before you print them out. You can even cover up cracks and fold marks in Photoshop.

If someone wrote "Aunt Millie, 1946" on the back, then scan the back too. You may recognize dear Aunt Millie, but your kids and their kids won't, and a big goal here is to create something for future generations.

We copied the scanned photos to CDs to everyone in the extended family for Christmas. Each family member also got about 9 prints of things like Grandma in her 1920s dress complete with ostrich feathers, the old family house, et cetera. It was cheap to do (burning extra CDs is cheap and we printed out the photos on the home printer) and everyone LOVED their presents.