How I can help get your photos under control:

Digital Organization

  • It’s critical that you have a photo hub where all of your digital photos and videos will live going forward. A client recently nicknamed this her “Source of Truth”. It is the one place where your photos and videos are found, instead of scattered across various devices and online services.
  • If you have both printed photos and digital photos that need to be organized, start with your digital photos. This way, when you move on to scanning your prints, they will be added to an organized digital photo library.
  • Once everything is in one place, it is much simpler to keep it safe. I recommend having 3 copies of your photo collection. Copy 1 is your photo hub. Copy 2 could be an automated backup service (I use and recommend BackBlaze). Copy 3 could be something such as a TimeMachine backup or an external drive that you manually update every 3-6 months and keep in a drawer.
  • The final component of a digital photo collection is an online viewing platform that will allow you to view your photos on any device and easily share with others. Some popular options are SmugMug, Apple Photos/iCloud, Google Photos and Amazon Photos.

Scanning

Technology lets us do a lot of things with our photo collections — our digital collections, that is. But the analog images – prints, negatives, slides, and albums – need to be scanned.

  • Scanning will create a backup in case some type of disaster occurs in your home such as a fire, tornado, or even a water leak.
  • Physical items deteriorate with time. The magnetic “sticky” albums of the 1970s-1990s are actually the first thing I recommend that my clients get scanned because the combo of the plastic and glue created a chemical sandwich that’s changing the colors on those photos.
  • Slides, if well preserved, create amazing scans! If you only viewed old slides using a projector on the wall, you will be amazed at how detailed the scans are.
  • One of the techniques that I use is camera scanning. By using a professional camera, I am able to scan fragile and difficult items such as scrapbooks and albums. I can provide files for both the full page and each individual image on the page if desired.