Scan your photos for posterity

This article has been submitted by a GrownUps member. GrownUps accepts no liability for its content and the views and information contained within are not necessarily those of the GrownUps website.

For more than a century, people have been capturing special moments with photographs. For the same period of time some of those photographs have been irretrievably lost in fires or other catastrophic events. Modern digital technology has, assuming appropriate storage protocols are followed, made such losses unnecessary. There are however, a huge number of 'old school' photographs (quite literally in many cases) that remain at risk.

This is particularly so in the case of clubs and organisations which, in order to recognise achievements and to build a history, photograph teams, committees, office holders, or club/organisation members that come to national prominence (each of the 2000+ All Blacks that there have been so far came from a local rugby club) etc. and hung the photos on the clubroom walls. Often, the negatives (remember those) are misplaced or simply lost over time, rendering the photograph irreplaceable. Professional photographers employed to take the 'annual team photo's' go out of business, are taken over or otherwise disappear taking with them their negative archives - once again making the print on the wall a 'one-off'. It is also likely that records will be supplemented from time to time by the donation of additional photographs from deceased estates, bequests, people moving away or downsizing and through club or branch amalgamations.

Likewise, families capture the personal events in their lives through photographs - births, birthdays, confirmations, military service, engagements, weddings, annual holidays, the list goes on. Such photographs represent the history of families and in many cases are also a snapshot (no pun intended) of social history and are therefore a valuable resource for future research whether personal or otherwise. A recent exhibition at the Arrowtown Museum documented the development of and the lifestyle represented by the 'crib' (the 'Bach' for those who don't speak mainland) particularly in the 40's to 60's and relied heavily on personal family photographs as illustrations.

There is a 'human imperative' to know where we came from and there has been recent increase in interest in personal genealogy (there WILL be someone in YOUR family that is putting together a family tree), a major element of which is research arising from family photographs.

As with clubs and organisations, the photographs are displayed, placed in albums or kept in a box somewhere to be brought out and viewed occasionally and the negatives (?), well they may be in another box somewhere! The caveat regarding professional photographers applies here just as much if not more (who took YOUR wedding photos? how about the one of Johnnies kindergarten class or Jane’s dance recital when she was 6? – professionally taken but could you replace them if they were lost or damaged?). The 'circle of life' also means that family history photographs become 'homeless' through estates and the like and are often lost because there is nowhere to store them.

In all cases, the loss of photographs and of the history they represent either through destruction or irreparable damage in the event of fire, flood, storm or other catastrophe can be a further blow at a time of considerable stress. It is also an unfortunate fact of modern society that the burglar or vandal that enters your home or club premises has no compunction about defacing or destroying photographs whether by deliberate malice or 'frustrated disappointment' at otherwise slim pickings.

Photographs or at least an image of them, particularly old ones, can be safely and simply safeguarded by scanning and consequently 'preserved' by storage on electronic media. This won't save your original photographs from destruction or damage but it will enable them to be reproduced (and in some cases improved/aesthetically restored). It is also worth noting that scanning can be used to create ‘standard’ prints (and an electronic version) from either negatives or slides.

For maximum protection and benefit a digital archive of photographs does however need to be dealt with in the same way as a household or business inventory - clearly & accurately recorded, securely stored offsite/off premise, easily accessed and readily and regularly updated if applicable.

The Benefits of Scanning Your Old Photos

There are numerous reasons for scanning photographs. The primary one in the current context is of course archiving but there are additional benefits available, some of which are listed below.

Archiving

In the event of loss or physical damage, photographs can be reproduced. Additional prints can be made; photographs can be emailed or posted online. Virtual albums can be created for those family gatherings. An entire family or club history could fit on a single DVD (so much easier {and safer} than freighting a stack of albums to that family reunion in ‘the old country’ or for the committee arranging the rugby club 150th anniversary celebrations).

Image Preservation

Old photo albums and the mounting mats of older framed photos contain destructive glues and chemicals, such as acid, which can damage photos over time. Likewise, light and atmospheric factors do affect displayed photographs. Originals can be safely & appropriately stored whilst a copy is displayed for 'everyday' purposes - for valuable photographs this is also an obvious security precaution.

Aesthetic Restoration

Once an old photo has been scanned, the image can be 'restored' using photo editing software. Faded, torn or yellowed photographs can be turned back into impressive photos that are crisp and clear.

Editing

Even if your photos aren’t that old, scanning and using photo editing software allows them to be 'tweaked' to your liking. For example, red eye can be corrected, distracting backgrounds (or the Ex husband/wife) removed, contrast or lighting enhanced or a range of effects applied.

There are various options available for converting photographs to digital format; you can do it yourself with a standard flatbed scanner (don’t be tempted to use an auto feed model to speed up the process as the rollers can quite literally strip the picture off the paper with old photographs).

For the do-it-yourselfer, consider both storage format and where you will store the scanned images. For storage purposes the JPEG format is preferable as they are smaller files but this may require the scans themselves to be converted from another format. For physical storage, although computer hard disk space is now a fraction of the cost that it was a few years ago, it is a lousy place to keep your precious images. Just ask anyone who has been around computers for over a decade: you'll be lucky to find someone who has not lost a hard drive at some time. The data can be recovered by specialists but the costs are horrendous.

Removable or external hard drives and other forms of mass storage offer a good solution and nowadays are much more affordable. CD/DVD writers are your best bet and are standard equipment in most modern computers. Blank disks are available in bulk at $1 - $3 each (a standard CD will hold more than 650 megabytes which equates to between 300 and 600+ (JPEG) photographs and at over 4.5 gigabytes on a DVD it is up to 4500). Also, the inability to re-record (on a CD-R/DVD-R) is actually a plus as you can never erase your data in error.

You can take negatives in to a photo processing shop or prints to a photo restorer. A home inventory service is also an option in terms of creating and appropriately storing an archive, one that I am aware of in the South Island (www.kais.co.nz) will come to you to do this (including negatives and slides).

print