First, my apologies for not posting yesterday. I think my drive and dedication to my career may have finally caught up with me. I have been totally exhausted the last few days, but taking a day off also allowed me to get my thoughts together so that I could think about what I wanted to post to you tonight.
So, a couple of posts ago I shared about the items you need to hunt for and gather in your quest for creating awesome family heritage albums. Today, I want to talk a little bit about how to sort, organize and properly handle your old photos. (I call them old photos because I know that most people today haven't actually printed a photo in at least a couple of years)
Here's some things that you are going to need:
- Archival Safe photo boxes
- A photo scanner (or someone who is willing to scan them for you)
- Cotton gloves
- Face Mask (the kind that drywallers and construction workers wear to avoid breathing in dust and particles)
- Soft-Lead blue or black art pencil
- Dental floss & hair dryer
- Smart phone or digital camera with a memory card/stick
When working with your photos, remember to wear the cotton gloves. Have you ever seen shows that show people going through old documents or those shows that help people learn how to research their family history? In those shows you see the people wearing gloves whenever handling old documents and photos. The reason for this is to insure that the natural oils and any dirt that may be on one's fingers don't transfer to the documents. This is why it's important that you, too, wear gloves when handling your old photos.
Now, if your hunting and gathering turned up a bunch of those old peel & stick albums, your first chore is going to be removing all of your old photos from those albums. I know what you're thinking: "If they are already in an album why and I going to take them all out?" The best way that I can explain this is to tell you that those old peel & stick albums are ruining your photos. These albums were made with materials that actually interact with the chemicals used to print these photos. Our goal is to preserve these old snapshots - so trust me when I tell you that you want to get these photos out of those old albums sooner than later.
Some of the photos that have been in these peel & stick albums might be difficult to remove. That is where the dental floss and hair dryer come in handy. Take a piece of dental floss and slide it between the photo and the album page, and gently loosen the photo. If it is still stuck, using the low setting on the hair dryer, heat up the page. This will "melt" the adhesive on the page. Take the floss again and slide it behind the photo to release it from the page. Remember to this with care - you don't want to cause any (additional) damage to these already fragile mementos.
As you remove the photos from the pages, be sure to use the art pencil to write on the back anything about the photo that you know and want to remember. I promise you that if you don't do this - when you start putting the photos into new, photo safe albums you will have looked at so many photos that you won't remember everything about each one and you will get facts and information confused. I have been there and done this and I have had to spend many hours trying to go back through the photos to remember the information that each one provides.
Next, you want to organize these photos and store them in a photo safe organizer box. I personally have the old sort boxes that used to be available through Creative Memories. Unfortunately, these boxes are no longer available through conventional sale as they were discontinued in July 2013. You may get lucky and find a few online, however, I would now recommend the Ahni & Zoe Photo Box or Photo Boxes from Memory Scrapbooks. The biggest thing I want to stress to you when you are searching for storage boxes - make sure they are acid-free, lignin-free, buffered and made of archival safe materials. There are lots of options out there if you search around. But the ones I have recommended above are my personal favorites.
Once you have and sorted and grouped the photos - now it's time to start scanning them and creating digital backups of these photos. There are several reasons why you would want to make sure to do this...but the most important reasons are 1.) You can make more prints of photos to give to other family members and 2.) You will always have a backup in case "tragedy" strikes like a flood or a fire and the originals are some how destroyed.
I will leave you tonight and allow you to get started on this step of the heritage album making process.....happy reminiscing!
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