A personal story that you want to preserve and share?
Tame a mountain of photos that you want to organize, preserve, and share?
Celebrate life together for an anniversary.
Commemorate a life milestone like a graduation or wedding?
Collect and share your family stories?
Present a life story, perhaps your own, at a memorial?
Many of your Story Production projects have come to us in surprising ways.
Some are people wanting to put together their life stories in photos, music, and interviews to share with family members at special events or memorials. One presentation for a birthday was expanded a year later for a memorial.
We want to know what you are interested in? What kinds of story productions would appeal to you?
Please Complete Our Poll
You can select more than one option for the multiple-choice selections and there is an open question at the end to tell us what you are looking for that may not be in the questions. Thank You.
You have sometimes looked at that mountain of boxes of old family photos and thought the D-Word.
Who is that?!?
Dumpster
Who would know? Right?
If asked, you would say something like, “‘Geez, I thought those were boxes of old Playboy (Playgirl, Sweet 16, Popular Mechanics, …) magazines you wanted me to dump.’
Still, you will feel like you have a reservation in that special place in hell next to people who commit atrocities or talk in the theatre.
Why Keep Them?
So you can’t just dump the photos, but why keep them?
Here are some of the reasons that may be haunting you:
The photos are a record of your life.
You have been entrusted to maintain the family heritage and legacy.
Ignoring or destroying the photos would dishonour your ancestors.
In the age of Ancestry sites and programs, many people would delight to know more about your family members.
Everyone has interesting lives and stories worth telling.
Some of the photos may have historical value.
Many of the photos trigger fun memories.
But I Can’t Store Them Forever!
Yes, just having them take space in your basement or storage unit until left to the next generation won’t fly either.
So you are stuck between a box and a hard place.
You have to do something!
Why not try to make it as fun as possible?
Transform Guilt into Fun!
Have a Fun Family Photo Party
Here are some ideas to turn the drudgery into a fun event for your family.
You can try the suggestions yourself or have us help relieve some of the drudgery and create an entertaining and enlightening experience for you.
Imagine the Party
You and your family members are sitting around a table or reclining in a living room with your favourite beverage in hand.
On a screen (the largest you have available), you are flipping through the scanned and restored photos.
‘Hey, that is Missy Springhorn! she was in my grade one class. She used to blow her nose into her sleave. Yuk!’
‘That is Uncle Bob, I think he lived in Cleaveland and worked as a blacksmith.’
‘That is Grandma and Grampa Gunderson getting married on 1897.’
As you discuss the photos, you can record the session and add titles and descriptions to the photos.
Imagine the Gratitude
You family and friends will love seeing the photos and sharing the stories. They will be glad that you helped make it happen.
What If Your Family Is Spread Around The World?
Zoom is a great way for family and friends from around the world to join the party.
The host of the Zoom session can record the comments and share the screen with the photos.
Your people can join in on a desktop computer, laptop, or mobile device.
Make it a fun family event!
Wait a Minute! There is a Catch!
Yes. There are a few important steps skipped.
How do you transform that mountain of photos into images to view and document at the Fun Family Photo Party?
There is no escaping the fact that it will take some equipment, strategies, and a lot of time to digitize your treasures.
Options For Digitizing Photos
Here are some ways of capturing your photos in digital format for editing and sharing.
Do the scanning yourself. You likely have a printer with a scanner built in. Dedicated scanners run from being small and inexpensive to being capable of scanning transparencies and larger images.
Take photos of photos permanently stuck in albums or framed on the wall.
Hire someone to do the scanning.
Have a trusted service do the scanning.
Consider Having a Scanning Party
You might invite your family over to have a scanning party.
Scanning can go quicker if you have someone doing a quick sort and handing the photos to the people running the scanners.
Warning: A few beverages and you might not make much progress on the photos.
Could still be fun, though:-)
How Tell Your Story Productions Can Help
There are a number of ways we can help get your photo party started, starting with free. See Resources For Doing It Yourself below.
Until then, here is how we can help.
Photo Scanning and Organizing Special
We offer a special package where we create a framework for scanning and organizing your photos.
The package includes us scanning your photos, though the framework itself is where most the the magic happens.
The special price is $297 for just the scanning and organizing if you are not yet ready to commit to a Fun Family Photo Party.
We help facilitate your Photo Party from start to finish, including:
A Discovery Session with you to see what photos and other materials you have, what you want to achieve, how many family members you want to invite to the party.
A Family Photo Party Roadmap that outlines the steps to make the party a success.
Setting up a Photo Framework System for collecting and organizing the photos, including:
A place on Google Photos where the photos will be stored.
Create Google Drive documents for collecting stories and biographical information.
Create a Photo Index to list the photos available.
Best Practices Guides for labeling and documenting the photos.
Scanning and digitizing photos that we can access.
Coaching your family members who want to help with scanning. This is perfect if you have family members spread around the world with different sets of photos.
Processes for having your photos and possibly video digitized by trusted services.
Preliminary organization of the photos in the cloud.
Editing, cropping, and restoration of key photos.
Planning and Facilitating the Fun Family Photo Party. We will host the party using Zoom.
Transcribing the audio from the Zoom recording to collect the names and stories.
Update the labels and descriptions with information from the transcription.
Make all of the collected photos and information available to family members for continuing the process.
Provide sharing links that you can send to friends and family.
Provide a Story Production Roadmap to provide some ideas about what you could do next with the photos and stories.
Above all, the end result of preserving and sharing your priceless family photos and stories will be something you will cherish for generations.
Are You Ready to Transform Your Photo Burden to a Fun Photo Party?
We are offering a special price of $597 for a limited number of families. Various payment options are available to make it easy for you.
Let’s talk about creating a fun and lasting experience for your family.
Contact us at info@tellyourstory.productions to book your Fun Family Photo Party Special.
You can also contact Greg Dixon at greg@tellyourstory.productions or 604-762-6410.
Resources for Doing It Yourself (DIY)
We can’t possible help every family who needs help throwing a Fun Family Photo Party, so here are some resources for doing it yourself.
Google Drive is a great place for collecting and sharing family information. There are other services available, but Google Drive is a good place to start.
Zoom and Google Hangouts are good for hosting the Photo Party and also for collecting stories one on one.
Want Us To Make Your Fun Family Story Party Happen?
Contact us at info@tellyourstory.productions to book your Fun Family Photo Party Special. You can also contact Greg Dixon at greg@tellyourstory.productions or 604-762-6410.
“Maybe we should climb Mt. Everest Instead, ” asks your sister earnestly. “Seems like that would be easier.”
Bonnie’s mother had 23 boxes of photos. About 4 cubic yards of photos. Many absolute treasures from the 1900s.
Where do you even start?
What Is the Goal of Scanning the Photos?
Do you want to archive and document everything?
Do you want to select the most representative photos for a presentation for her Celebration of Life?
Do you want to tell the Family Story represented in the photos?
Scan Em All!
There are some good reasons to consider scanning them all, especially if you are worried about them being lost or damaged. Or you are tired of paying for storage and no one wants to take the boxes.
Most of the tips here will apply. Just allow a lot of time and try to make it a fun activity you do with other family members.
Select Photos for a Special Occassion
The most likely reason you are wanting the climb Mount Kodak is that you want to create a biography or special slide show for an occasion such as a wedding, birthday, anniversary, or memorial.
Choose An Organization Plan
Adobe, Apple, and others have platforms for organizing your photos, including tagging and adding descriptions.
However, I prefer to avoid these proprietary systems that seem to have a logic that is not always obvious and does not translate across computers and operating systems.
So I recommend simply using a folder system that makes sense to you.
For Example:
Simpson Family Photos
Homer and Marges Wedding 19xx
Bart’s Baby Photos
Whatever makes sense to you
Naming Conventions
When you start scanning into the folders or copying photos from digital cameras, will want to give each one a descriptive name.
Eventually.
In order not to lose your mind on the first day, I suggest that your approach sorting and naming in separate passes:
Copy/Scan the photos into the appropriate folders.
Go back and process and name each photo you are interested.
If you try naming the photos as you scan them, they will possibly be working on your memorial before you get through them.
Or you will lose steam and stop.
If possible, get others to do the naming while you scan. Using something like Google Photos will allow family members around the world to help with this.
The naming convention I use is to keep the original scan number or number from the camera and add descriptive text.
For example:
P1922099_aunt_martha_kissing_uncle_bob_1978.jpg
It is up to you if you choose to point out that they were married to different people at the time.
Or not.
Scanning Versus Photographing
An alternative to using a scanner is to use a good camera to photograph each photo.
With attention to lighting, angle, and focus, you can capture images with equal or better quality than scanning.
And sometimes taking photos out of albums is difficult without damaging the photos.
The main reason is speed.
In the case with the mountain of 23 boxes of photos from Bonnie’s mother, it is highly unlikely to ever get her family together to sort and scan.
However, it may be possible for them to sort through and pass to me to photograph. Then I would do some processing and put them online for naming.
You might have someone scanning too, but I think taking photos will be around ten times faster.
However, the one advantage of scanning is you can do some cropping and adjusting in the scanner.
Images from the camera will almost surely need to be cropped and adjusted before use.
You will want to test taking photos and also scanning the same images to fine-tune your technique and compare quality.
Focus will not be an issue with a good scanner. It could be and issue with a camera.
Scan Resolution
Your scanner will have an overwhelming number of resolution options.
If your main intention is to use online and in slide presentations, then 300 dpi will work for most photos.
If you want to print, then perhaps 600 dpi for small photos is better. You will end up with larger file sizes and may need to export to smaller file sizes for use on the web.
If your purpose is to archive for future use, then a higher resolution is a better choice.
You can always reduce without losing quality.
Printing low resolution images large will have poor quality.
Get To Know Your Scanner
Spend some time getting familiar with your scanner and it settings before going into a scanning frenzy. Scan the same image with different settings and check the results.
Its A Miracle!
Some scanners have filters that you can apply when scanning, like scratch removal and automatic balance correction.
Many of the photos will be faded and discolored to the point of looking monochrome. Many scanners have an option to fix that, often nicely balanced colour photos.
And sometimes they will make a photo worse, so you deselect the option for the photo.
We will provide a detailed look at scanning settings in the future.
For now, I hope the suggestions here help make the task seem less daunting than climbing Mount Everest.
Need Help?
We can coach you through the process or some or all of it for you.
