What to do with Old Photos?

[Bonny]

Earlier this month I was tasked with clearing out my father's stuff. Among his treasures were lots of physical photographs. I did a quick cut and mailed a bunch to my brother and uncle. Now I've got a bunch of myself as a kid during the 60s and 70s. I'm trying to figure out what to do with them. We don't have kids and while it's fun to do a trip down memory lane I'm trying to figure out if there's any reason to keep them and if so how to organize.

Your thoughts please!

Thank you

[Tennesseer]

After my folks passed away, my siblings decided I get all the family photos. I scanned them all and depending who were in the picture, put them on a CD and sent them to their now adult children.

My siblings and I get them same pictures on CDs. If aunts, uncles or cousins were in the pictures, my cousins got those pictures on CDs. If my parents adult friends and their kids were in the pictures, the now adult children got those pictures on CDs.

What everyone did with their CDs was up to them.

[raeoflyte]

I'd scan them and save by date as much as possible. But I'm a picture person.

[nidena]

You could upload some to ancestry.com for those who are mapping their family trees or will in the years to come.

[jerseygirl]

DD puts photos in a big bowl on table and changes them maybe once month. It’s fun to go through them instead of leaving on computer or in albums, boxes etc.
I never asked what she does with them after

[azucena]

Are you close to any nieces or nephews? My aunt/godmother never had children and was going to throw away her old photos. I went thru and kept quite a few. I didn't keep ones from her travels and sightseeing.

[tskeeter]

Photos can be family treasure.  I’ve become the caretaker of some family photos. One is a picture of all the people who attended a family wedding in about 1890.  What makes the photo special is that behind the people is the home that my GG grandfather built with his own hands in about 1874.  If you visit the farm today, you can see the original house underneath 150 years of additions and modifications.  A second photo shows a street view that includes the store that one branch of the family owned in 1870.

In selecting photos to archive, I consider significant family events.  Weddings, graduations, christenings, and the like.  Think also about buildings that have historical significance or which are significant to your family.  Houses, farms, etc.  How about activities family members participated in?  I have a great picture with my brothers, one of our uncles, and one of our nephews skiing at Park City.  I’ve seen a picture of one of the female members of DW’s family showing off some really awesome rock climbing form.  Then there is the picture of my sister making a stairway luge run during a ski trip while the Winter Olympics were in session.  Or the picture of DW and two of her Irish second cousins comparing their genealogy research.  You only have to look at those three women’s eyes to know they are related.

For long term storage, I scan photos and save them on a solid state disk drive (SSD).  (I also keep the originals.). As I understand it, most digital storage devices, such as a thumb drive or CD, must be connected to a computer about once a year to keep the data from degrading.  A SSD storage device will store data indefinitely without the need to be “tickled” periodically.

Got old photos of people or places you can’t identify and you don’t want to store them any more?  Consider donating them to the historical society in the area that your family came from.  Sometimes a historical society volunteer can identify the people or event in the photo.

[bookkeeper]

I spent 5 days cleaning my Mom's house.  We set up a 6 ft. table in the living room with the boxes of pictures she had roaming around the house.  I tasked her with going through the pictures before her birthday when the family would be coming.  She has thrown some away.  Hopefully she can identify who is in the photos.

She has been sorting.  This is just the first round. 

I am considering making some greeting cards with the old prints.  Some card stock, rubber cement and a snarky greeting - boom - take that Hallmark!  

[TheOtherMe]

Please don't use rubber cement or put anything on the photo itself. 

Photos are treasures to genealogists.

The advice is genealogy is to keep 3 digital copies, scanned in TIFF format.  One on a computer hard drive, one on an SSD external drive and one in the cloud.  That is a minimum.  TIFF photos are lossless.  JPEG photos degrade each time they are copied. 

Yes, I have photos saved in JPEG format where I will never see the originals again.

[Tennesseer]

May 25, 2022 7:41:40 GMT -5 bookkeeper said:

I spent 5 days cleaning my Mom's house.  We set up a 6 ft. table in the living room with the boxes of pictures she had roaming around the house.  I tasked her with going through the pictures before her birthday when the family would be coming.  She has thrown some away.  Hopefully she can identify who is in the photos.

She has been sorting.  This is just the first round. 

I am considering making some greeting cards with the old prints.  Some card stock, rubber cement and a snarky greeting - boom - take that Hallmark!  

Good idea while a parent is still alive.

Also if one has not done so, ask a parent what life was like when they were growing up. 'We' sometimes forget to ask those types of questions while they are alive geniuses we are so busy and focusing only on our own lives. my siblings and I are guilty of that though we do know some of it. Their stories will go with them to their graves and it is too late.

[tskeeter]

May 25, 2022 10:24:25 GMT -5 Tennesseer said:

May 25, 2022 7:41:40 GMT -5 bookkeeper said:

I spent 5 days cleaning my Mom's house.  We set up a 6 ft. table in the living room with the boxes of pictures she had roaming around the house.  I tasked her with going through the pictures before her birthday when the family would be coming.  She has thrown some away.  Hopefully she can identify who is in the photos.

She has been sorting.  This is just the first round. 

I am considering making some greeting cards with the old prints.  Some card stock, rubber cement and a snarky greeting - boom - take that Hallmark!  

Good idea while a parent is still alive.

Also if one has not done so, ask a parent what life was like when they were growing up. 'We' sometimes forget to ask those types of questions while they are alive geniuses we are so busy and focusing only on our own lives. my siblings and I are guilty of that though we do know some of it. Their stories will go with them to their graves and it is too late.

The stories our elders tell can be priceless.  I remember my Grandmother telling about taking a winter shortcut to school, across frozen fields and hopping a creek.  When I figured out where the farm was, some decades after our conversation, I was also able to locate the rural, one room school house (currently used as the township hall).  And sure enough, there is still a small creek between the farm and the school.  Grandma’s comment about the creek seemed inconsequential all those years ago.  Today, it’s a detail that helps to understand the area geography and that adds color to our understanding to her life in the early 1900’s.