True confession: I’ve been scared to death to tackle the boxes and boxes of vintage family photos until recently. It wasn’t until I began outsourcing the scans that it seemed doable.

I realize I still have all the digital work: tagging, captioning and editing. Yet that all seems a lot more doable then finding time to scan. I’m not really sure why.

The above slides were a happy find last week. They contain some of our most treasured family images and they have been perfectly preserved.  Images like this one  of my Uncles and Aunt as children.

And this one of my grandparents on a trip to Hawaii in 1961… you can barely see my grandmother carrying her train case   in the lower left corner of the image. I love train cases because when there was a train case in the bathroom at our home it always meant that grandma was there and memories would be made…

I’m learning that organizing is a sifting process.  The boxes and boxes of family memorabilia I inherited aren’t just neatly organized with photos and slides – they are intermixed with family stories, birth dates, old cards and postcards, mixed in with papers showing important dates of life and family events.

The first sifting occurred when I sorted through everything and weeded out duplicates and things that weren’t necessary. That was really difficult because I come from a family of savers. My grandmother saved every college paper she ever wrote. Receipts for just about everything she bought. Cards that everyone sent. A big part of this project has been just making the decisions as to what is most important. Because too much information is really still too much information no matter how much you love the person it is associated with.

In the second sifting I sorted through with the intention to find all the photos that needed to be scanned – I came across some fun items – like old programs from fundraising events. I loved the vintage ads – especially this one…

The crazy connection here is that my grandmother lived in Idaho all my life. However, when she was married and her children were young, she lived in Bountiful, Utah. Fast forward 50 years and Troy and I lived in Centerville, Utah where my favorite gardening store just happened to be J and L.

It was fun to see that my grandmother frequented the same garden store when she was my age and her children were young as mine were when we lived in Centerville. It was fun to discover a connection she and I both have to one business over fifty years apart. Another fun tidbit is that when my grandmother lived in Bountiful J and L was in Centerville. When I lived in Centerville J and L was in Bountiful.

It really makes me think about how future generations will view our photos with GPS coordinates today. How many places will we both be generations apart?

It is a big project to try and curate these photos. It’s not just about getting them organized but the larger goals of finding the best way to share them – especially with family members who aren’t very tech friendly.

Even with the challenges this project presents, I am so grateful for the perspective it gives me. As I work to organize and share the memories of my family, I am beginning to see better ways to curate the present in a way that will be meaningful for future generations.

1. Crop and Edit to my taste (some images look better in black and white, creamtone, etc.)
2. Keyword the images with Who, What, Where, When. I’m finding that I’m adding a lot of new keywords to my list for these earlier years in my life.
3. Change the metadata date for the images. Metadata > Edit Capture Time. There is no way to know the exact date so a lot of times I just guess a close date.
4. Caption the images. The stories in retrospect – wow!

The thing that surprises me most is how different these photos are in retrospect. Sixteen years ago when they were taken my captions would have been focused on Kate’s age and what she was doing in life then. Now I see stories of the things in our life that seemed so mundane back then:

So when a sale came up for 21 cent negative scans with ScanCafe, I jumped on it. I estimated I had about 1000 negatives to scan. I pre-paid my deposit and waited for the Scan Cafe shipping box in the mail. By the time it arrived, it still took me a few weeks to gather my photo negatives together. I boxed everything up and sent it off.

My First Mistake

The first mistake I made was choosing the Rush Service. It would save me 30 days of waiting and I thought for 14 cents a scan it wouldn’t be that bad a price to pay to get things back 30 days earlier. Big mistake!

Within ten days I had an email from ScanCafe that they were taking a bit longer because there were actually 3,731 negatives to scan rather than the 1,000 I had estimated. Yep, my mistake and totally my fault, which leads to lesson one:

• Make sure you do a quick count of your negatives. Don’t guess about what you send. That way you won’t be surprised later.

My mistake was costly – $418.04 to be exact – and I only had myself to blame. Trust me when I say it is worth the time to count the negative sleeves you are sending in! (I’m still cooking beans and rice! Well not really, but I probably should be! ) **One small positive item to note is that since I sent in my first group of images, the rush fee has been reduced to 7 cents a scan.

The Process

Even though ScanCafe’s rates are very reasonable compared to others in the industry, the cost was the most painful part of the process. It took me less then ten minutes to setup my order. My prepaid shipping box arrived in days and once they had my images, I received emails every step of the way until my originals were back in my hands.

One of the main reasons I didn’t do this sooner was my fear of something happening to my originals. The constant communication from ScanCafe completely put my fears at ease.

When I finally had the chance to view my images online, I realized that not only had they been scanned in, they were also auto color corrected.

Another thing I liked was being able to purge some of the scans online. ScanCafe allows you to browser your scanned images online and delete the images you do not want (as long as it is less than 20% of your order).

I Wish I’d Done This Sooner

I’ve had these negatives for years. I honestly thought I would get it done myself and save so much money… Five years and still no scanning!  With the boxes and boxes of photos I’ve inherited, there was no way I could do this alone.

Another thing that motivated me to send these out was the quality of negative scanner that ScanCafe has. A few years ago I had purchased my own negative scanner with great intentions. Yet after a few sleeves scanned, the quality was so bad it just wasn’t worth it!  Not only was the quality better with ScanCafe, they also ran simple corrections – saving me hours of editing.

The Verdict

I’m hooked. Honestly. Sincerely. ScanCafe has no idea who I am and could care less that I’m writing this post. I am still hooked.

There’s just nothing like seeing a treasured photo from years past in digital format all ready for metadata – nothing like it!

I couldn’t wait to get more digitized. Last week I ordered a ValuePack which includes 600 photo scans. I boxed up my Aunt Jana’s photos and sent them in.

I seriously cannot wait to get them back. This time I nixed the rush fee so it will probably be a month or so, but I am sure I can keep myself busy tagging and organizing the 3000 scans I just got back.

If you have a lot of photos or negatives you want to scan, I highly recommend creating a free account and then waiting for the discount emails to roll in. The usual price is 29 cents a scan but if you wait a few weeks you will probably see a code to get scans at around 21 cents. Or you can pickup a Value Pack right now for 22 cents.

I’ll keep you all posted how this next round with the ValuePack group I just sent in goes. It will be different without the rush fee as it will take a trip overseas and back. This definitely will be an adventure.

So now I’m curious – do you scan? Care to share any tips? We’d love to hear them!