Photo Decluttering?

[JoeP]

Related to the de-cluttering thread, specifically photos...

We have probably 6 bins worth of photos, varying in age from the 1960s up to about 2006 when we stopped getting prints. If I had to guess, we have a few thousand pictures. Has anyone found a good way to preserve them, yet have them accessible? I'd like to clear up the space and simplify.

I have privacy concerns storing stuff like this in the cloud. I also have concerns scanning them and storing them on DVD, which degrades over time. I'm also not comfortable trusting either to the point of then shredding all our photos.

Help!

[creditcardfree]

If you want to keep originals you want to make sure they are in archival safe storage, so they will stay in good shape.

My guess is you could reduce a fair number of pictures before deciding on a storage mechanism. Go through for duplicates (remember those?), very blurry or bad shots, shots of just landscapes that don't mean much now, and toss them. Yes, toss them. You want to keep the best of the photos you did take. I would also get rid of negatives, since photos can be scanned and reproduced easily in most cases. Also get rid of the packaging the photos came in.

I keep ours in archival shoe type boxes in chronological order. The disadvantage of this is they are not easy to look at.

You might consider making photo books of the really great photos from each year, or each child, or vacation so they can be more easily viewed. You can still keep your originals.

[snafu]

I'm working on inherited bins of photos to try to tell the family story. I've been putting photo chronologically in those shoe box style CCF uses and then cherry pick the very best for small albums to depict very specific events like my parent's 50th Anniversary party & trip to grandmother's home of origin in Europe for example.

We do our best to create digital albums, keeping only the best dated and named like... amusement parks, birthdays, cars, concerts, favourite relatives, game nights, graduations, dogs, Halloween, houses, National Pks, reunions, sports, travel, weddings etc. I've done family calendars as Christmas gifts and would like to do a photobook but they seem too expensive.

[rennigade]

Scan them all and stick them on an external hard drive. You may even want to stick them all on 2 different external hard drives in case one of the drives fails. Also not a bad idea to keep the hard drives separate...one in your house...one somewhere else in case of fire, water damage, etc.

I personally have 2 external drives I keep all pictures on...and I also upload as many as I can to cloud services. Anyone can have my pictures, I couldnt care less about the privacy of family/vacation pics...theres no nudity of any kind...meaning baby pictures or adults pictures. As long as I can retrieve them if I have to im happy.

[GrimJack]

When you digitize them put them on the most up to date equipment and store them with something that will read them. Archiving color photos takes 5 separate steps: straight bland and white then black and white through the 4 filters - pretty much guarantees that you can restore the photos when you need then. Archiving color is nearly impossible since the color bleeds/fades/wanders. If you can't associate names with them and tie the names to family you might put them low down on the priority list,

[JoeP]

Scan them all and stick them on an external hard drive. You may even want to stick them all on 2 different external hard drives in case one of the drives fails. Also not a bad idea to keep the hard drives separate...one in your house...one somewhere else in case of fire, water damage, etc.

I personally have 2 external drives I keep all pictures on...and I also upload as many as I can to cloud services. Anyone can have my pictures, I couldnt care less about the privacy of family/vacation pics...theres no nudity of any kind...meaning baby pictures or adults pictures. As long as I can retrieve them if I have to im happy.

After you scanned the prints, did you shred all the prints?

My primary goal is reducing clutter. My current method for using an image involves trying to find the print, scanning it, and then putting the print back, so I'm not really saving any space.

I'd like to eventually just find the image somehow, and cut out the scanning part. This suggests some sort of mass scan activity. I am still very scared of losing everything if I throw out the prints...but I may be hoarding because I call up an old print only once or twice a year!