When I was growing up - before the age of the digital camera - disposable film cameras were all the rage. We took them literally everywhere, taking photos of random places and things and people. We’d get them developed at the local drug store, pour through them, realize they were all so wacky, and find a nice home for them in a junk drawer somewhere. The lucky few might find their way into use as a bookmark, under a magnet on the fridge, or if they were especially noteworthy they’d end up in a scrapbook. Inevitably, they would all fall to the wayside of our collective consciousness doomed for all eternity to live in box. How exciting, right?
And as it was in the generation before ours where polaroid prints were the day’s disposables and the one before that when they were slide prints, it always seems that those photos end up being passed from generation to generation and collecting more and more into a giant mass of history. Your family’s history, your local area’s history, your state’s history, etc. What sounds so insignificant at first - when you really start to think about it - becomes so much more important when you entertain the context of what all those prints represent: physical representations of people and things that will never exist again. Now that is deep!
So they’re obviously important, right? What should we do with all of those thousands of old family memories? I have some thoughts!
Digitize and Organize Those Old Family Photos!
Step one is you have to get those things backed up. Certain print papers might boast longevity but nothing is going to last forever. The least you can do is get those prints in digital format so they have the potential to last a great deal longer as 1’s and 0’s. This has the added benefit of making it a LOT easy to share with others.
The wife was recently going through a project where she was taking all of her grandfather’s photos and digitizing them. We bought a scanner for just this thing YEARS ago and we’re finally putting it to use. For a couple of weeks she would just take the photos and scan them one-by-one, saving them to her desktop in a folder. Soon, we’re going to throw that into a google drive folder and share it with whoever in the family wants them. They can download them to keep digitally on their own, get them printed; whatever their heart’s desire.
An alternative to the google drive or similar solution (Dropbox, Amazon Photos, etc) would be something like Google Photos. It offers a cloud-based gallery where all of your photos can live, be sharable by link, and also viewed as a pretty nice digital gallery. There are options for liking and commenting on photos, so conversation with friends and family becomes easy. It even has a print store attached for easy ordering.
Beyond the self-service method, give Google a quick search for “photo scanning service” and I’m sure you’ll find quite a few companies that will do the drudgery for you and offer you some professional services to boot like color correction or delivery on a physical drive of some sort.
Creating Physical Albums and Scrapbooks
Obviously, we live in a digital age and have those photos available in digital format is amazing. But there’s something special about holding a physical photograph or paging through an album that you just can’t replace. You can buy some super inexpensive but decent looking albums from craft stores and get some clear photo sleeves and just go to town. Boom, you now have a great item for your coffee table, bookshelf, or guest room!
If you’re the crafty type, it’s time to bust out those scrapbooking supplies we all had back in the day. Grab some colorful construction paper or special scrapbooking paper, fun stickers, washi tape, some funky scissors, and go to town. On some pages as a feature of their own or as a caption to photos, thrown down some handwritten text - a quote from a loved one in the photo, a poem, or just a quick memory. Rinse and repeat while letting your creativity go to town. Just have fun and you’ll have a personalized keepsake in no time flat.
This is especially fun to do with your kids. Sit down at the table with those supplies, pop some popcorn, and just have a great hour putting together something with the whole family. Want some photo inception? I’ve just described a FANTASTIC lifestyle photoshoot idea. I know a photographer who would be interested! (hint: it’s me! Reach out and we can chat about it!)
Going a Step Further With Custom Photobooks for Your Old Photos
If scrapbooking isn’t your jam (or you want something really fancy in addition to that), maybe getting something a little more polished and custom is the way to go. That’s where custom photo books come in. There are plenty of online services (Shutterfly, Mixbook, etc) that let you throw together an easy photo book online and get it printed and delivered within a week or two. You can customize everything just about and they have some very easy to follow templates.
Now these make for fantastic gifts too and since they’re relatively inexpensive, it’s not out of the question to make some for the whole extended family for the holidays or some other special occasion. And places like Shutterfly are always running off and on specials, so you’re bound to catch a sale once in a while and capitalize on the bulk ordering.
Old Photos Make for Great Wall Art
If you have a particular couple of favorites that stand out on their own, they may be perfect candidates for getting them printed to hang on your walls. You could create a gallery wall - where you print a bunch out in different sizes and with different sized frames and have fun organizing them about - or get a really big one to really take center stage in a room.
If you really want to go all out, try getting one printed on canvas. It might be more expensive, but it would definitely make them more in the artsy lane.
Do Some Repurposing and Turn Those Photos into Art!
While we’re thinking on the creative side, why not make some art yourself. You can buy materials that can help you transfer these photos onto wood or fabric. Maybe don’t put Great Uncle Jim’s face on a t-shirt - unless you’re in to that sort of thing - but you can find some great pieces of wood on Etsy to make some rustic art or get some light colored fabric and transfer a bunch of photos to make a single decorative throw blanket.
There’s So Much More You Could Do
Hey, thanks for making it this far. I hope you enjoyed these ideas and they give you the inspiration to put some old family photos to good use! It’s so sad to see old prints collecting dust, am I right?