Category: Blog

A shipment of cat food arrived the other day and it made me think of photo organizing. How is that even possible, you ask? Well, to start with, I pretty much think about photo organizing 24 hours a day (yes, I even dream about it!). So I look at just about everything through the lens (haha) of organizing photos.

In this particular instance, though, I was looking at packing materials. We share our home with 10 rescue cats, which means we buy a lot of cat food. In the olden days, we went to our fantastic local pet store to buy food and supplies (and pet the resident cats). This year, however, we have switched to ordering our food online so it can be delivered at the end of our lane. This is super-convenient for us, since we live 45 minutes from town, but it does mean extra packing materials that we wouldn’t otherwise need. (It also means a lot of heavy lifting for our FedEx driver, but we put out snacks and water to soften the exertion!)

I’m always looking for ways to repurpose items rather than send them to recycling (or – worse – the landfill), so when I saw the little cardboard dividers protecting the cases of canned food, I immediately thought how they would make perfect (and free!) sorting containers for photos and keepsakes! The smaller sizes are the exact width to hold an envelope of photos, and the bigger boxes are great for larger portraits, newspaper clippings, etc.

I wanted to share this idea with you to demonstrate that organizing photos doesn’t have to be costly or complicated. Yes, you can buy special plastic containers or other items to help with your sorting, with the advantage that they will look nice, be sturdy, and might even be easily stackable. They might protect your photos from dust and other environmental damage until you’re ready to put them in their long-term storage. 

But don’t let the fact that you don’t have the “perfect” sorting containers stop you from getting started! Look around your living space – you’re bound to see a variety of boxes or tubs that could work perfectly and won’t cost you a cent. They could be as humble as a shoe box or as attractive as a decorative container. Just be sure they are as clean as possible, without any edges that might damage your items.

Don’t stop at containers! Think about other materials you might have on hand that could help. I discovered I still had index cards from a paper I wrote in high school! (Did I mention I hate throwing things away?) They’re even still in their own plastic box. I can repurpose these to use as dividers between film rolls, or for signs, note cards, etc. 

Then, once everything is sorted, organized, and curated, you can transfer everything to beautiful archival storage, like these gray or black boxes (you can find these particular boxes at Archival Methods). Won’t that be an amazing feeling when you get to that point? Let’s get going!

I had intended to finish my “Motivation to Start” series back in August with what I think is the biggest motivator of all – sharing – but somehow here it is mid-October already!
As some of you might remember, my mom celebrated her 80th birthday in August, and I was preparing some photo gifts for her to help her feel like her friends and family weren’t so far away, even though they were scattered across the world (or at least 6 feet away!). 
But everyone in my family and my husband’s family knows that the chances of getting a photo-related gift from me in any given year for any occasion (or no occasion at all) is going to be pretty darn high. Why? Because I think there is something magical about sharing images of a life event with a loved one. Whether they are photos from a shared experience, such as a holiday or reunion, or a special event in your own life that you want to share with others, these gifts let the recipient experience and remember special moments in a way no other medium can. 

If you’re like me, you might feel compelled to sort through and organize 100 years’ worth of photos and memorabilia and curate the most beautiful and poignant images into a full-color, professionally printed book that would look dazzling on any coffee table. And, of course, that’s fine if you have the time, patience, and know-how.

But sometimes these lofty goals become overwhelming, so the project never gets off the ground. Which photos should I choose? How should I arrange them? Should I add captions? What’s the best printing company? And so on.

That’s why it’s important to remember that sharing photos doesn’t have to be complicated, time-consuming, expensive, or require special products or services. In fact, how many times have you come across a photo while scrolling through your library and texted it to a friend because you know it would brighten their day? Free, instant, and magical.

Apply that same notion to a photo gift. For example, years ago I made duplicates of photos I took when my husband and I visited my parents in Durango, Colorado. I had some colorful construction paper lying around, so I just glued the duplicates onto the paper and made silly captions to go with the photos. Now that my dad has passed away, I love looking back on this fun time we all had together.

Another time, I glued duplicates of a family vacation into a journal made of handmade paper, which was a bit more fancy than the construction paper. It didn’t matter that neither of these was archival quality because these weren’t original copies of the photos. 
Of course, there are a variety of professionally printed products you can create, too. Everything from books and albums to wall art to mugs…and new innovations every day! I always look forward to my sister’s yearly calendars, which feature photos of her life in Scotland. And yes, I have, in fact, created a photo book of photos curated (some restored) from seven decades of photos for a 70th birthday. So much fun!

The fun ways to share photos are endless, and in my opinion, the joy that these photos bring to the recipients is a great motivator for getting started on organizing your photos. Maybe you know where some great ‘70s Halloween photos are in your collection that you can quickly pull out and share with a parent, sibling, or child in a couple weeks? Maybe the “person who has everything” would cherish a special photo album for Christmas, featuring vacations through the years or milestones in their life?

I challenge you to go to your physical or digital photo collection right now, organized or not, and open any tub, album, or folder and find one or two photos to send to someone, either digitally or through the mail. Letting someone know you’re thinking of them is truly the best gift of all, and the photo is just the icing on the cake! And everyone could use a little more cake these days.

I’ll start: I recently came across a photo of my sister-in-law in a Halloween costume in 1970. Isn’t it adorable? I can’t wait to email it to her and the rest of the family as a Halloween greeting. They likely haven’t seen this photo in decades, so I think it will be a fun surprise!

You’re next! Does sharing a photo give you new motivation to take a stab at getting your collection organized so you can easily share more in the future?

As I was working on a client project today, it occurred to me I could illustrate one of the scanning principles we often talk about: it’s usually best to scan negatives rather than prints.

The first photo is an example of three original prints (the smaller squares) along with three photos that I scanned from the negatives then printed on my printer. I could still do a little tweaking of the colors (the blues are a bit too blue, for example), but overall you can see how much better the versions from the negatives look! And even if the negatives are a little scratched or worn, chances are they haven’t been handled nearly as much as the prints.

Also, if you look at the close-up photo of the graduation photos, check out the difference on the right-hand side: you can see how much of the image got cut off when they printed the original print. There’s an entire book missing! (I circled it in red.) This isn’t so important in this example, but I came across a photo where a person’s face was cut off so you couldn’t see who was in the photo. Scanning from the negative solved that problem!

If you’d like to get some of your photos scanned, see if you can find the negatives to go with and have those scanned instead if they’re in good shape – you’ll be amazed at the difference!

I recently treated myself to a 50 megapixel Canon camera for my birthday (I know, I’m a geek and proud of it!). I won’t be using it for frog and toad portraiture, which is one of my favorite pastimes. Instead, I’ll be using it in my camera scanning rig.

I think there is a lot of confusion when it comes to scanning and understanding the differences between scanning options, and it’s not surprising! Words like megapixels, resolution, DPI and PPI all get thrown around a lot, and it can be hard to really understand what people are talking about.

So, I thought it would be fun to do a quick comparison! The image above is a photo I took with my iPhone SE. The subject is a small, vintage photo, and I have it next to a ruler so you can get a feel for how small it is. The iPhone actually did a pretty remarkable job of getting a good representation of it! This was about as close as I could get and still be able to focus.

The second photo has three items: one is the tiny original photo; above that is a print of an iPhone SE shot, printed at full size; and to the right is a print of a shot from my new camera on 13×19 paper, which is as big as my printer will go. At full size, it would have been over 20 inches square. I didn’t do much editing to the photos, just tried to match the iPhone and Canon shots in overall look (I have to admit, I’m not crazy about the reddish hue and would probably tweak things a bit so it was more faithful to the original, but this gives you the basic idea!).

Now, you may never need to print a 20” photo of Aunt Bettie from the turn of the (previous) century, but this illustration demonstrates that the more information you’re able to capture in your scan, the more you’re able to do with your images. Think about displaying your family’s vacation slides from the ‘60s on a large-screen TV! You’ll be seeing photos in a way you’ve never seen them before!

Just something to take into consideration when you’re investigating scanning options!

Here’s another fun before and after. You’ve probably come across vintage photos that have a silver mirroring in the dark areas. That’s often because the chemicals weren’t fixed properly when the print was made. Since the silver is highly reflective, it makes the image difficult to see.

There’s a trick in camera scanning, called “cross polarization,” that allows you to remove that glare. You accomplish this by adding a polarizing lens filter to your camera, and polarizing sheets (called “gels”) over your lights.

The results are pure magic! Here is a shot I took without the cross polarizing, and another I took with (plus a quick pass with Photoshop to take out some of the speckles). Isn’t it amazing?

Suddenly, an image that was difficult to discern with the naked eye is restored to its former glory! Won’t my great-uncle’s family be thrilled to see a photo of Uncle Buck like they’ve never seen it before?

What kind of magic can you work with your photos today?

(P.S. Even though Buford passed away some time ago, I did get permission from his family to use this photo. It’s always a best practice to ask before sharing publicly!)