scan all my photos

I’ve scanned all of my photos that were on film, and all my parents’ photos that were on negatives. I’ve come to find that my parents’ photos aren’t terribly well organized, so there’s a lot of lose pictures that will need to be hand scanned, but that’s a project that could take forever to organize, so waaaay beyond the scope of what I planned.

It’s really nice having 30 years of my life organized visually. It makes me wish my parents had taken more photos. With the number of photos I’m taking of my new baby, she may wish the opposite :-) 16 months ago

I was really worried about losing all my photos or something happening to them so I started scanning them on my home scanner. This took ages and i lost momentum. I searched the internet and found somewhere who scanned photos. I posted all the photos i wanted scanned and they were back in 3 days with a backup DVD. The company was www.scanero.com, i would recommend them. 3 years ago

Last month I bought a film scanner – something I have been hankering after for ages. Ever since I started shooting film and Polaroid in favour of digital it was a must. The scanner has a negative and slide tray with it which I intended to use to archive all of my old photos. What I wasn’t prepared for was the time involved in doing this. Scanning high-res negatives takes a good few minutes for each photo – where 300dpi photo scans are much quicker.

I’m done this mainly to get a digital backup and to get a few choice photos up on Flickr.

My mother has given me some slides she took when my sister was born. She hasn’t seen these for over 30 years and it will be great to get these into the computer. I also have a few packs of slides that I bought at car boot sales. I’m keen to get a Found Photo set established on Flickr and get these uploaded.

I’m trying to get a 30 or so done every weekend. This may be hit and miss but I’ve already made a start and intend to keep at it. I’ll borrow photos from my parents each weekend I see them as well. My mother, in her infinite wisdom, binned all her negatives a few years ago. A few of her sets are starting to stick together as she never put them in albums. I’m seeing my photo scanning as mission of mercy before my childhood photos are ruined.

On a side ‘Thing’ – I’m also putting more of my film photos into albums. Like the hoarder I am I’m not getting rid of any negatives or photos that don’t make it into albums. I’ll be buying a big air-tight plastic box in which to keep these in the loft.
I can’t see this process ever really coming to an end due to my magpie like skills to acquiring photos but once the majority as scanned I’ll consider it done. 3 years ago

I can’t believe it, I’ve actually finished with this one now!!!!!

It took about 4 days to finish them off (I still had half to do), but I mean I sat at it and really did nothing else for those 4 days.

In addition, I scanned the outside of the multi picture frames we have in the house, and printed out a couple of A4 sheets with the photos all in the right place to pop behind the frames. I’m planning to change the photo’s in the frames every couple of months so we don’t get bored looking at the same pics all the time.

All the originals (2 crates, total volume about 90 litres) now live with one of my cousins, and CD’s with all the scanned photos have been sent to other members of my family, so now everyone has everything that I’ve got :) We are all delighted! 3 years ago

Oh man, this seems like a HUGE job…..and then what, do you toss the hard copies of all those photos? 3 years ago

My father passed away recently, so I’ve been looking through the photo albums and yearbooks. I would like to preserve these by scanning them and keeping them on my computer and maybe a G-Mail account in case my computer unexpectly crashes. This way I wouldn’t feel deprived of precious memories when I give the albums and yearbooks to my younger sister and her family. 3 years ago

big island, hawaii

hand coated platinum print diptych, 8×10 neg, 16” plasmat lens 4 years ago

as in plywood 4 years ago

in the last few months i’ve set to scanning old negs and prints. i’ve discovered that some of my negs have gone missing but hopefully they will turn up. why does it seem that what is most prized ends up missing? truth be told, the activity seems to have more value in inspiring the creation of new work than preserving the old. i do get a queezy feeling on the idea of building a temple to one’s oeuvre. self-knowledge is essential but living, and reliving, the past is a trap.

this is a diptych of two 8×10 platinum prints that i made in the 80’s. industrial wasteland meets medieval castle, the combustible towers we might ascend in defense of our fragile realm. 4 years ago

this is kind of a long term goal because it’s going to take awhile I’m not only scanning my personal pictures, but I’m scanning my parents pictures As I was helping my parents clean out there storage unit I found so many pictures I even found some slides from my Moms first marriage that we don’t care about, but all my brothers baby pictures were on them I don’t think I had ever seen or atleast not seen many baby pictures of him they were all him 5 and up practically which is about when she married my Dad. well I scanned them into the computer and now I’m going to give them to my brother he’ll be happy to have them also found both of my parents pictures from thier high school days I’m gonna scan all this stuff eventually!! 4 years ago

semi-renovation: new tile floor to ceiling
new fixtures. 4 years ago

semi-renovation: laminate floors and new appliances 4 years ago

I did this for my parent’s 30th wedding aniversary and it was great. I sent all our family photos to a photo scanning company called Beckyscan- www.beckyscan.com It ended saving me a lot of time and was surprisingly cheap. I would definitely recommend doing this for yourself or a loved one and I would recommend using beckyscan. 4 years ago

this only works if it’s done systematically.. at least for me. I’ve got it started. But, to continue this goal, I really need a better scanner. And a clean work surface… So my mini-goal for the next month is to research scanners. 4 years ago

I have sooooo many old photos. It’s going to take me forever to complete this goal. It’s so much easier for me than doing scrapbooks. 5 years ago

I’m determined to do this I have so many pictures to scan it’s crazy I have all my parents from the last 30 years and I want to get them all scanned before they disintigrate or fade my goal for this week is to do 2 albums. 5 years ago

I scaned all of my picutres because they are one of my favorite possesions. If something ever happend to them (fire, water damage,etc.) I would be very upset. So I scanned them and put them on photobuck.com, in my album. You can replace almost anything but picutures. 5 years ago

I’ve scanned almost 1200 photos in the last couple weeks and this is only scratching the survface many more to go I’m gonna do them all, but I’m taking my time if I did them all at once I’d never have time for anything else. 5 years ago

I want to do this to protect the old photos some of them have begun to deteriorate (spelling?) actually I’m scanning my parents old photos I have a few albums of my own which I plan to scan also, but I’m starting with thier photos I’ve done 4 albums so far and there are about 10 more of thiers to go and then 4 or 5 of mine I’m gonna scan them and then save them on disks it’s to much to try to save them all on the computer. this is kinda of a longer goal cause I’m not gonna rush and do it all at once that would take forever! 5 years ago

At the beginning of December, I was doing really well with this one. Had scanned all the loose photos, and two albums left to go, and the photos that are framed around the house. Then disaster. My Mom passed away, and while I’ve been sorting through all her things, I have found photos, and a couple of albums stashed away in the most unexpected places. I now have a crate full of photos to scan again! 5 years ago

Hmm, I have scanned over 2000 pictures! I am almost half way! 5 years ago

i’ve been taking pics since i was 11 years old. i have 35mm, 2 1/4, 4×5, 5×7, 8×10 negs and a boxes and boxes of slides and prints. 5 years ago

I have one photo album left to go, and the photo’s living in frames around the house. Then I can move on to the fun bit … makeing the photo DVD!!! yippee 6 years ago

Well, I did my research and no one in my area does it, but once I got out on the web I found several companies/people that do it…it’s cool though because I needed to access the competition for my business plan so I’m excited. 6 years ago

Well, this is the latest in a line of brilliant ideas, but this one has been with me for a while and I am actively pursuing it. Goal: purchase a laptop and scanner and scan peoples photos. Basically, everyone has paper photos and I will scan for a fee. I will also use as a fundraiser because it can help them raise money for their causes, ie. churches or schools. I have so much I want to do for myself and others and it takes CASH. I am also writing a screenplay, children’s books and on the dance ministry at my church! So where am I in this process…saving for the laptop (having a garage sale soon) and working on business plan to get a small loan for equipment! 6 years ago

this goal is not going well for me. the crate full of photos is in the same room as my scanner, but i only seem to scan something when i need it for something specific.
I wish i had a month to set aside just for scanning, and see what sort of dent i can make in this goal. 6 years ago

This is a such a massive task, I don’t know were to start!

I mostly concerned about what the dpi (ie 300dpi) to the scan the photos at for starters. Furthermore how you position the photo correctly on the scanners flatbed? I don’t want to be doing the time-consumming task of the correcting the angle of hundreds of photographs in a program like gimp or photoshop.

I think I will have to get a new scanner for this task as well (which I can’t currently afford). My old scanner is also very problematic with drivers and does not have the cool filters for different surfaces (ie newspapers & magazines).

To be honest, I not sure if the scanner works at all now that I think about it.

One day I hope I’ll do this task! 6 years ago