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June 16, 2006

629 Baby Pictures

629 baby photos of Steve and I alone have been scanned.

That is what I have been doing all week.

This has been a HUGE undertaking but I am so glad I started and am now near finished.

Since marrying Steve his mom has occassionally brought things to me. A baby picture. A shadow box with his hospital photo, silver spoons, cigar and a flower inside. An artistic characature done when he was two years old. Since the baby had been born she has brought even more. His silver piggy bank. His baby shoe planter. 2 hand fulls of baby photos from newborn to early childhood.

I am beginning to think she likes me. These are things she would NEVER have even considered giving to his exwife. Not in a million years. There would have been no respect or appreciation for them.

The photos have spent their life with us living in a photo box. I really had not had time to sit down and organize them. Plus our old scanner would not talk to our laptops and the whole thing frustrated me and made me angry about it all.

Now with a new scanner (and Digital ICE technology) I feel like I am in heaven while tackling this large job.

The baby photos of Steve and myself was a huge undertaking alone. All of the photos were sorted by date. Each photo was then scanned as it is. Then scanned again as restored. The photo was then placed in an acid free, pvc free photo album with memo notes or whatever caption might be on the back. Once all of the photos were in the album a cd or dvd was burned (depending on file size), placed in a protective sleeve and put into the photo album. A second cd/dvd was then burned and placed in a masterfile for safe keeping.

Then I did Colby's.

and J's.

and Gracie's is in progress.

and Stevens is on the schedule for this afternoon.

I did my sister's baby photos too. My mother brought me her baby photos as well.

If you haven't already, I urge you, please. Sit down with all of your photos. Assess what needs to be done to preserve them. Get them out of those old photo albums with the sticky gooey pages that eats holes in them and turns them yellow. If your photos are already in archival type albums "Yayyyy!" for you. Scan your photos and save them to digital media. Digital media (cd and/or dvd) will not last forever either and you need to check them every few years to insure they have not sustained damage. This is a very small price to pay to know your memories are safe.

Consider yourself your family's historian. Preserve your family history. Sit down together with your children as you sort photos and talk about what was going on at the time or answer questions they have. Make a giant job a fun job.

I have had so much joy talking with my kids about their baby pictures. They see how important what I am doing is and they have not interupted the process and have been extremely helpful with Steven during the day.

I can't promise you it will not cost you money. Over the past three months I have purchased a VHS to DVD converter, a new scanner and 8 acid free, pvc free, archival photo albums. I have spent the better part of two weeks working on these photos. This week I have devoted most of each day to the process of preserving the photos and burning the cd's and dvd's.

It has been worth every $$ and every minute to me. Maybe someone else wouldn't cherish these things as much as I do. Maybe more for others. I don't want to wake up one day and say, "I wish I had ..." and there is nothing to be done.

Neither do you. Come on. Spend some time with your memories. Make them available for your grandchild and great children. Write the notes, make the lables, take the time.

In Septemeber my Aunt will be coming home from Washington state. I will be going back home then too. We will be spending 4 days at my grandmother's home. Each and every photograph will be scanned. DVD's will be burned and available for each family member who wants a copy.

What shape are your photo collections in? Are they in the old style sticky paged books? Are they in boxes? What about your negatives? (Todays new scanners can copy your negatives and slides as well.) What are you going to do to preserve your family photo history?

Posted by Angie at June 16, 2006 09:51 AM

Comments

Posted by: InterstellarLass at June 16, 2006 10:10 AM

Posted by: Hope at June 16, 2006 12:05 PM

Posted by: ccap at June 16, 2006 12:10 PM

Posted by: angela marie at June 16, 2006 12:20 PM

Posted by: halloweenlover at June 16, 2006 01:58 PM

Posted by: Jennifer at June 16, 2006 07:02 PM

Posted by: Raehan at June 17, 2006 02:23 AM

Posted by: poopie at June 17, 2006 05:59 PM

Posted by: kenju at June 19, 2006 08:38 PM

Posted by: Gracie at June 26, 2006 09:11 PM