Family Photographs
“He made me suddenly realize that photographs could reach eternity through the moment.”- Henri Cartier-Bresson (French Photographer)
On Saturday, my church held a "Family History Fair" providing the public with information on Genealogy. I volunteered to put together a handout on preserving family photos. Here is what I learned:
Do's and Don'ts for preserving family photos
- Fully identify and label all photos so people won’t be forgotten.Use soft pencils like 6B or special ink. Never use ballpoint pens.Do not use rubber cement, glue, magnetic pages, or adhesive tape in albums.
- Old albums are like diaries; don’t take them apart. The exception is magnetic Vinyl album pages emit harmful fumes that damage photos. (Vinyl smells oily and the pages are sticky.) Use only Mylar or plastic labeled “for archival storage”.
- Keep photos away from areas that may become hot, damp or bright. Heat, moisture & light are bad for photos and may encourage mildew growth.
- Keep photos clean. Oils from fingers can damage the film.
- If you want to display a photo or include it in a child’s scrapbook, use a copy and keep the original safely preserved. When framing a photograph, keep an air space between the photograph and the glass.
- Copy home movie film and original videos, and use these copies to absorb most of the viewing wear and tear.
- As insurance against catastrophic loss, store your negatives far away from your prints. Send copies of favorite photographs to friends and family.
- Even the best color film will fade within 50 years. Black and White photos may last at most 150 years.
- Digital copies of your special memories won’t fade but computer hard disks will crash. CD discs can fail after just 10 years. Upload images to the Internet for long-term storage. Be mindful of copyright laws on professional images.
Bottom Line
The top recommendation is to label all your photos. One site argued, why save pictures of total stangers? I have that problem with old photos from a hundred years ago. No one knows who is pictured. Is it a relative or an old neighbor? Sometimes the caption is less than helpful, "Uncle Joe" or "Mom's friend".
Don't let your family become forgotten or lost through time.
Labels: Family, Family History, Genealogy, Photography
posted by Gary W Kibble at
1:00 AM
1 Comments:
Pictures and family history are both a passion of mine. I've spent a lot of time creating scrapbooks about our family adventures. One of the first things I learned when I started scrapbooking was about preserving the photos with archival quality products.
My grandparents passed away and left hundreds of photos unlabeled and unidentified. And the pool of people who could identify the pictures is shrinking rapidly. My goal this summer is to scan those pictures in and label them as best as I can. Then I want to distribute CD's to all my family so that we all have copies.
I've also pondered the conundrum of my scrapbooks. They are large--measuring 12 x 12. I choose that size, because I can fit in a good number of photos and journal and still be creative with my pages. But in the event of a fire, they would be gone, because you can't lug 10 books out the door when you have children to save! My friend recommended scanning in the pages. Her kids scanned all her scrapbook pages this summer. She has made multiple copies of the disks. I've thought then I could even print books easily from the scanned pages using one of the multiple photo-printing websites.
My only problem is keeping up with technology. Eventually, the use of cd disks will fade and computers will change. So I guess I'll have to keep up with the changes! But it is completely worth it. I really chronicled our time in Sweden. I want my children to remember so the books are a great treasure to me. Not only that, I find it incredibly satisfying to create the pages.
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