To be honest, I’ve never really enjoyed spending hours looking through someone else’s family photo albums—and I get the feeling I’m not the only one! On the other hand, receiving a snapshot by email always makes me smile. :-)
I stopped printing digital photos many years ago, and I recently paid a service to scan my shoeboxes of old pictures. Not only has this eliminated a lot of clutter from my life, but I actually look at my photos much more often. I can access them more easily, and more quickly, now that they’re on my laptop. If on a whim I want to view pics of my trip to Paris, the office Christmas party, or even my high school prom, they’re right there at my fingertips; if I had to dig through a closet or shoebox to find them, I likely wouldn’t bother.
Furthermore, in this day and age, digital photos are a lot easier to share than paper ones. Most of us don’t get to see our friends and relatives as often as we’d like—so when we finally visit, we may end up browsing through prints from months (or years!) ago. It’s much more fun to receive a recent pic of a friend’s new baby or relative’s vacation by email, than to slog through a pile of outdated photos later on.
Another point to consider: paper photos can easily be destroyed in a fire, flood, or other disaster (or slowly deteriorate with age). Since digital photos can be “stored” in multiple ways (on a hard drive, online, and on DVDs in different locations), you’re much less likely to suffer a loss of your irreplaceable images.
So kick the print habit, and if you have albums or shoeboxes stuffed with old photos, consider scanning them (or paying a service to do so). You can share your snaps with friends and family by creating online albums through services like Flickr and Shutterfly. Be sure, of course, to burn backup copies of your digital photos onto archival DVDs.
Going digital not only frees up space, and eliminates the need to store, move, and worry about physical photographs; it also enables you (and your loved ones) to derive much more enjoyment from them!
Is it expensive to have paper photos scanned “in mass?” Were you happy with the quality of the digital images that were produced? I have a scanner but it seems like I’m never happy with the photos I scan in myself, the digital images always seem to highlight the flaws in the paper photos. And it seems to take me a lot of time to do a couple pictures. Luckily I gave up my film camera years ago, I love using my cell phone to take pictures. But the paper “archive” I will some day inherit is pretty extensive.
When you are taking new digital pictures, do you find you take lots and delete the bad ones or keep them all “just in case”?
I love the irony in the statement “burn backup copies of your digital photos” ;-)
Hi Robert! I used FotoBridge.com, and paid $69.95 for 500 photos (I first whittled down my collection to 500 photos by selecting only the best, and most meaningful, shots.) They offer a variety of packages: the more photos you have scanned, the lower the price per photo.
While the quality certainly isn’t as high as an original digital shot (as you mentioned, physical flaws are reproduced as well), it was good enough for my purposes (preserving the memories, without the paper). I thought about scanning them myself, but really didn’t have the patience or time.
I do take a lot of digital photos, but delete the bad ones right after I transfer them to my computer. I don’t like digital clutter, either!
LOL regarding the backup copies–fortunately, two DVDs still take up less space than 500 photos. :-)
Personally, I find it’s nice to look at printed pictures… just not too many.
I used to print off almost all my pictures and spend hours organizing them in photo albums. Finally I realized it was ridiculous, and I started printing small versions of one or two which stood out from each event, and putting them in my journal.
But to each their own :)
Hi Krista! It’s certainly understandable to want to have some printed pictures around — I think being selective about it (as you are) is the key. :-)
I’ve been meaning to something like this myself and get them stored onto those LCD picture frames, creating a new picture every day. That way, you give old snaps a new life especially if they’re hidden away in some cupboard.
Jens, that sounds like a wonderful way to enjoy those old photos!
I took your advice and scanned a bunch of old photos recently, and uploaded them to Photobucket. I’m glad I did! Some were getting really faded, like a favorite photo of my grandparents from when they were first married. Now my photos will last forever!
This resonates with exactly what I did years back, Francine! (I’m starting to believe we think quite alike, which is super cool!) :D
I used to be dubbed the “family historian” and not just with my family but anywhere I went with my friends, I would always have my camera to snap pictures and memories. But the thing was, I would PRINT them all out! Ugh, looking back, I realized what a WASTE! Of time, energy, and certainly, money. Then, all the printed photos would collect in multiple photo albums, just to be stored downstairs in my parents’ basement. And whatever goes in the basement, usually doesn’t come back out alive.
Since those days, I’ve come far far along, to where I actually don’t even own a camera. When I do need one, I borrow one from any of my friends who own one. I never need to worry that I will “run out” of people to borrow electronics from, especially since they know me to be responsible and not break things (typically!). All photos that are worth keeping, I’ve scanned and stored digitally. No more paper photos for me now! Bliss in its simplest form. Love it!
I recently started scanning all of my husband’s photos from the time is parents met & married (my husband is 77 years old) and our 30 years together. We went through them & marked the names of the people on the front of the picture with a Sharpie & a Silver Marker by Pilot on the dark background pictures. Many people in the pictures he had forgotten their names, this way family members will know who they are looking at. I told the kids that as soon as this project is complete, they are to have all the paper photos. So far I have two DVDs of pictures. My son is going to help me to put them on snappish & on to a digital photo frame so we can enjoy them everyday instead of sitting in boxes in the basement. Less in the basement & I don’t have to worry about them being destroyed (the only material object that I could never replace). This was my winter project but with my husband’s age & deteriorating health, I wanted him to enjoy them now. I went to my local big box store (Meijer’s), their photo department has a scanner that you run the photos through in stead of laying them on a flat scanner. For $6.00 per DVD, I got a thumbnail printout of all the pictures on the DVD & selected a photo for the cover, all in a jewel case. What a bargain!!
Do you have any tips for organizing your digital photo life? I seem to have at least got them all in one place now, but finding anything is a pain.
Lots of people do enjoy looking at photos, be they actual prints or those in albums/scrapbooks. In all honesty I’d much prefer that than being subjected to yet another poorly composed and oversized image someone sent me from their computer. If I have too view one more snotty nostril or seemingly dismembered body belong to a family member or friend I may just give up email entirely. At least with prints most people seem to toss the less worthy before sharing LOL
That said, I’m trying to move away from prints and working towards storing images online. Flickr and Picasa both have nice layouts. Photobucket is easy to use, especially for those who like to share images on various forums.
While I have high hopes to sort through and scan 30+ years of prints myself I think that I’ll just end up paying a service ;)
But how do you enjoy them on your computer?
My favourite ways are canvasses, photo frames and I keep a little photo album handy with my twins latest pics to show friends and family
I agree that digital photos are easy to share, easy to sort and show off the best, and take up less space than physical, but please keep in mind that they don’t have much better shelf-life.
Hard-drives die. The chemicals used to burn a DVD wear out and will after a decade or so degrade so that they are not readable. If you digitize your photos fine, but keep in mind that you need to keep transferring the files.
Physical photos aren’t much better. They fade. They can be destroyed and stained.
My preference is digital photos and a digital photo frame (and I don’t like albums, but I do like pictures on walls), but keep in mind that if you want to keep those treasures, you actually have to WANT to keep those treasures. Copy them over, re-burn the DVDs every 5 years or so (to be honest I am not as tech-savvy as I was a few years ago, this issue may have been resolved, but I don’t think so) to be safe, and try to keep the files in 2+ different locations. If all your digital copies are stored on that home machine, then the fire will affect physical and digital pictures alike.
Francine, thanks to you I was able to scan all my old photos (6000 of them) and then throw away nearly all of them. I wasn’t able to whittle them down, nor organize them much, prior to scanning, but it will be easier to organize them on the computer. A dozen shoeboxes and HUGE bin are now emptied: hundreds of pounds of weight that I no longer have to worry with or ever touch again! Thank you for your courage and inspiration!
my son scanned boxes of old photos on to discs and we recently spent an evening laughing our heads off over the old pictures.