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Post by scrappyoutlaw on Feb 5, 2016 17:22:11 GMT
So my parents took a lot of photos during my childhood. We lived in Europe for 3.5 years during my childhood, they took even more pictures during that time period! They have them all in nice photo albums at their house. One of my goals for this year is to sit down with them and start getting stories that go along with pictures, and then I can scrap the photos with the stories over time. I want copies of the pictures, but it seems like a daunting task. Watching an old glitter girl video, she mentioned that she just takes pictures of pictures that she would like a copy of. This seems weird to me, but might be easier than trying to disassemble, scan, and then reassembling entire photo albums. I wonder though how good the quality could really be, or is there some trick to doing this technique that I am not aware of? Any peas have input on this, or experience with a similar project? Thanks! UPDATE: I started the project, it took longer than expected to get started because it turned out that a lot of the photo albums were all out of order so my mom and I got them sorted first. I took 2 hours of audio recording for the first album, and now I have the album and will be scanning the pictures so I can have copies. It was so great to go through the pictures and get the background. Here is a perfect example: The bottom left picture is my sister and I in 1989. We were standing in front of an old crumbled roman city in Trier. I never would have known that if I hadn't sat down with my parents to go through pictures.  |
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Post by ellewood on Feb 5, 2016 18:43:29 GMT
Man, that does sound like a lot of pictures to disassemble and scan in. BUT in this case it might be worth it. Not only do you want to have them for scrapping but also if you have a digital copy, it's a backup in case anything unthinkable happens... I know there are places you can send them to where they can scan and digitize for you. For a price, of course.
But to answer your question, how would I tackle this? Keep the album in front of you while you're watching tv and pull out photos. When the episode of whatever is over, run them through the scanner. Next episode, put them back. Pace yourself and work in chunks.
This is such a cute idea you have! I'm so impressed with your parents memory-keeping! Let us know how it goes!
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Post by ellewood on Feb 5, 2016 18:46:41 GMT
Also I can't imagine you'd have good results with taking pictures of pictures unless you took them out of the sleeves which... if you're doing that anyways, might as well scan it!
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Deleted
Posts: 0
Nov 23, 2024 2:53:28 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2016 19:13:03 GMT
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Post by mikklynn on Feb 5, 2016 19:34:24 GMT
I only had one book to go through, but I brought the actual album to Target, pulled out the photos I wanted one at a time and scanned them, then placed back in album. I did a bunch at a time, over maybe 3 trips.
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breetheflea
Drama Llama
Posts: 6,584 
Location: PNW
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Post by breetheflea on Feb 5, 2016 19:41:39 GMT
My scanner will scan more than one photo at a time (I can usually fit 3 on there).
My sister had some pictures of me I wanted and she didn't have a scanner and lives across the country but she took a picture of them for me, and emailed them. They turned out OK.
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Post by scrappyoutlaw on Feb 6, 2016 6:02:44 GMT
ellewood, I hadn't even considered the preservation aspect of getting copies of these photos, thank you for bringing that to my attention! And yes, what a great gift my parents have given me, I was so excited after posting here that I called my mom, I'm going over there in the morning to get started on it! I think it will be a very slow process, getting stories in small chunks over the next year or so, but I cannot wait! @elaynef and @breetheflea, thank you for sharing your experiences with this, based on your recommendations I am going to go with scanning so that I get good copies of all the photos! mikklynn, Do you think the scanner at target did a better job than a home scanner would do? I hadn't even thought of doing it on the store machines, I wonder if they are any different? also, @breetheflea, what on earth is the story behind your username? I always wonder every time I see you post!  I downloaded a voice recorder to my phone and just plan on sitting at a table with my mom and dad and a single photo album and talking through the photos in order. Does anyone have any other suggestions of things I should note or ask other than the obvious 5 Ws? -can I also add that I tear up at the thought of having hours of conversation with my parents about to be permanently saved to my phone (and backed up in a million places to preserve!) What a treasure that is going to be some day.
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Chinagirl828
Drama Llama
Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 6,682
Jun 28, 2014 6:28:53 GMT
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Post by Chinagirl828 on Feb 6, 2016 10:50:01 GMT
I downloaded a voice recorder to my phone and just plan on sitting at a table with my mom and dad and a single photo album and talking through the photos in order. Does anyone have any other suggestions of things I should note or ask other than the obvious 5 Ws? -can I also add that I tear up at the thought of having hours of conversation with my parents about to be permanently saved to my phone (and backed up in a million places to preserve!) What a treasure that is going to be some day. I understand why the idea of this recorded history touches you. In high school I had to do a video interview with someone who lived through the depression. I interviewed my grandparents. Although the video is not particularly long there is something about hearing their voices and seeing their mannerisms that just can't be replaced. While I totally understand the logic of recording the stories in order of the albums and think there's a lot to be gained from doing it this way, can I suggest you also consider letting them flip through and choose a photo and let them talk? While scanning in some of my grandparent's photos I had them in a pile on my desk. My dad was just flipping through them and told me all about their family car which was just in the background of a family photo he picked out. I suspect that if I had asked him about the photo I would have got more of the 5W's rather than the story about how this car was painted coral and lemon and was the first car they owned that had a radio inside. |
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amom23
Drama Llama
Posts: 5,447
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Post by amom23 on Feb 6, 2016 14:08:19 GMT
Since you said the photos are already in nice albums have you considered just doing a journal with the stories rather than scanning and creating new albums? It seems like an awful lot of extra work.
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Post by mikklynn on Feb 7, 2016 1:32:01 GMT
scrappyoutlaw I thought the Target scanner, a Kodak, would do a better job since it is designed for scanning photos. Is it true? I don't know...I doubt my home printer/scanner is great quality. Even the oldest photos came out really well.
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Post by myboysnme on Feb 7, 2016 16:29:47 GMT
I often take pictures of pictures and wish so much I had done this back when relatives, now long gone showed me photos but wouldn't part with them for me to have a copy made or even a photo copy.
In your case, I would leave the albums intact and not worry about photos of photos. Get the stories written down. You may want to do what I did - I sat my grandfather down with the photos, set up the video camera and he just talked about them. All the stories right there on film for you to transcribe later as you get to it.
I was going to redo my mother's highschool album because I had all this great '50's paper and stuff, but when I really looked at it I realized I cannot improve on her carefully putting in each picture and journalling in white ink. So I covered each photo with paper then sprayed the black pages with archival mist and gave it back to her.
Sometimes scrapbooking these things is not an improvement. But if you want to have a digital record, just take pictures of each page. You can crop each photo separately on the page digitally from there.
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kmcmullen
Shy Member
Posts: 39
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Post by kmcmullen on Feb 7, 2016 16:39:56 GMT
There is an app for that....it is called Photmyne. Check it out - I have used it once since i downloaded the app. Picture quality was very good.
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Post by crazy4scraps on Feb 9, 2016 3:16:16 GMT
I think the way I would go about it is like this. I would do like you said and sit with them to get the stories down, whether with a video camera or voice recorder, so you can eventually transcribe all of the stories, print them out and tuck them in with the photos as they are in the books but leave the books intact.
But as you're going through with them, make a note about the stories that impact you the most in some way, the ones that are most important to your family history. Maybe they are funny, sad, insightful, historic, whatever. Those would be the photos that I would earmark to copy the photos (either by taking them out and scanning or the picture of a picture method, then put them back into their respective albums) and actually scrap just those stories.
This way you have what amounts to the best of both worlds. You don't have to completely copy everything and spend all that time and money on photos you may never have time to get to but you still will have the family stories and family history to go with the books they have already compiled. And you still get to have the fun of scrapping those stories that mean the most to YOU.
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Post by TracieClaiborne on Feb 9, 2016 4:50:49 GMT
I am of a different opinion than everyone else. If they were my pictures, I would use the originals and tell my most important stories. The reason I say that is because I think today's scrap materials like page protectors are a safer environment for photos than what our parents are probably storing them in. If you did want to make copies of them all, I would invest in a scanner if you could. I have an Epson 2480/2580 and it does an excellent job. I am scanning all the slides from my childhood. I work on it a few at a time when I get inspired. It's a looonnngg process but worth it.
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Loydene
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 2,639
Location: Albuquerque, New Mexico
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Post by Loydene on Feb 9, 2016 14:37:46 GMT
I think there is benefit in saving the photos the way your grandparents put them in an album. My story: My grandparents had many albums that, when I was a child, I would always look through. Years later, after they both had died, we learned that Grandpa had taken the albums apart, throwing away a lot/most of the white ink lettering, and left the pictures loose or re-grouped on a new "photo page". A huge amount was lost when he did that -- and the photos mean so much less.
I also believe that the photos were preserved, well enough, in the original medium. Those black photo album pages may not have been "archival", but they had really been standing up to the tests of time and seemed to be preserving the photos.
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Post by crazy4scraps on Feb 9, 2016 14:43:11 GMT
I think there is benefit in saving the photos the way your grandparents put them in an album. My story: My grandparents had many albums that, when I was a child, I would always look through. Years later, after they both had died, we learned that Grandpa had taken the albums apart, throwing away a lot/most of the white ink lettering, and left the pictures loose or re-grouped on a new "photo page". A huge amount was lost when he did that -- and the photos mean so much less. I also believe that the photos were preserved, well enough, in the original medium. Those black photo album pages may not have been "archival", but they had really been standing up to the tests of time and seemed to be preserving the photos. I agree. The photos are in the albums presumably in some kind of order, so if you are going through and recording the memories it would make sense to leave them in the order that matches the documented stories. That way if you never get around to scrapping all of them, at least the stories and photos are together and are in the correct order so they match up. I would much rather scrap copies and leave the original books the way my grandparents made them, unless the albums they are in are literally falling apart. |
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Post by scrappyoutlaw on Feb 9, 2016 16:47:49 GMT
These ideas are all so wonderful!
I certainly want to keep the albums intact for my parents, so I'm going to carefully copy the pictures.
My parents never did any journaling or put anything in the photo albums but the pictures, so I'm doing this to get the stories of what the photos are. It really goes to the idea that was shared on scrap gals recently that photos without words are meaningless. If my parents were to pass away today (heaven forbid!) most of the pictures would make no sense to me, I wouldn't know where we were or why the pictures were taken! I want those stories so bad.
I am loving where this thread has gone and all the great input. Thanks peas!!!
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Post by 3girlsmomma on Feb 9, 2016 21:03:45 GMT
For the journaling of the stories, I would record my folks telling the story. A digital recorder is pretty inexpensive. You may get better stories if they can sit and recollect the memories.
Then you can just transcribe the stories.
And you could have a digital recording, for posterity's sake.
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Post by scrappyoutlaw on Mar 6, 2016 20:45:08 GMT
Update in OP
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Post by anniefb on Mar 6, 2016 21:55:53 GMT
Great to read your update.
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