What to do with old photographs?

I have hundreds of old photos, many of my family on my birthmother's side. A couple of months ago, I decided that rather than just have them sitting in a box, I would start posting them in a group I created on Facebook, especially for family photos. My family, mostly cousins are loving them and often blown away. My family is huge and widespread. This group is helping some of us connect and get to know each other's "branches". I have photos of everybody's parent(s), grandparent(s), aunts and uncles, siblings from way back in the day.

I'm not saying for you to start a FB photo group but maybe some of your relatives would be interested in some of your photos. No way to know unless you ask. Rather than hold on to the old pictures, which are now being stored digitally, I'll be mailing them to whoever asks for them. I gave all my husband's old photos to his daughters, sister and a nephew.
 

A few nights ago I turned on my desktop hard drive which has a lot of pictures in it. I emailed a number of pictures to family and friends who are scattered around the country. They all liked them a lot.
The picture of my wife talking to a ground squirrel in an Oregon forest was a favorite.
 
I have an old photograph of my grandparents' wedding from 1932. It's very big - about 48 inches high, and too big for my scanner. I'd love to get it either copied or restored for framing. Would a photography shop be the best place for this? I also don't want to spend a fortune.
 

I have an old photograph of my grandparents' wedding from 1932. It's very big - about 48 inches high, and too big for my scanner. I'd love to get it either copied or restored for framing. Would a photography shop be the best place for this? I also don't want to spend a fortune.
You can copy it yourself for starters. You need a tripod for steadiness. You can use natural lighting. Basically taking a picture of a picture.And then you can edit it and save it. I just did that with a cover picture on the Satuday Evening Post of Kennedy . To get it done professionally visit a framing shop. They can give you a price.
 
I have a picture of my aunt on the wall next to my desk. In it she is standing in front of a car. The license plate is dated 1917.

She was my favorite aunt.
 
I have been procrastinating about going thru that huge box of photos of ours. I don't have any children to pass them to and have no clue what to do with so many photos. The thought of tossing away wedding, birthday, etc. photos breaks my heart. And I know that no one (relative) will want these photos. Not sure what to do.
 
I have been procrastinating about going thru that huge box of photos of ours. I don't have any children to pass them to and have no clue what to do with so many photos. The thought of tossing away wedding, birthday, etc. photos breaks my heart. And I know that no one (relative) will want these photos. Not sure what to do.
But someone will. I am on Ancestry.com. Take the free trial period. Look up who is researching your family line. Offer the pictures to them, they will gladly take them. You might not be as alone as you think you are.
 
Photos: of all the things we accumulate over the years, it’s the one most difficult to part with, yet for others, the memories relived in our minds and paper clutter seems pointless.
To answer what was asked, I would say you Can safely get rid of it with no remorse. Obviously, the milestones eg: wedding, births etc, you can hold on for a while but do you really need the ones from your first cruise.
Its bittersweet as I type because I too have boxes of prints, promising myself to scan and create photo books. The difference is that we have kids and grandkids, so it will be treasured by them.
Good Luck with your decision and do what’s best for you guys
 
The OP does not read as the photos are precious so why not toss them? If there was any question then it is up to the holder but if I had to ak others what to do with them that is a pretty good clue they will not be missed.
 
As I mentioned on an earlier post I inherited a large box of pictures from my parents when they passed
away more than 30 years ago. This past year I have finally addressed the box by sorting and then scanning
a large portion into my computer. As a follow up to my previous post I downloaded the pictures to a company,
Snapfish, that generates photo albums from the scanned pictures. I was pleased how the album came out
and gave one to each of my kids. The cost was quite reasonable, less than $25 per album. The following are some
sample pages.

509D3592-FD09-4B10-8877-7DAA96DB2CC7_1_201_a.jpegF1CB6984-6615-452E-BF4F-BCD29EFAEF04_1_201_a.jpeg0A414592-15B3-43C9-9405-EE9EA99864A2_1_201_a.jpeg3E5D0AED-4E17-46E0-A299-D28E9C940358_1_201_a.jpeg
 
I was thinking of laying all the photos out on a tile floor and taking a final picture of them.
Maybe two or three sessions would do.
Then put them in a box and label the box with the date.
If you haven't opened the box after a year then dispose of them.
The other thought I had was sending all the grandkids pictures back to them.

Incidentally re putting stuff in a box and labelling it with the date.
A friend of mine does that with stuff he want's to get rid of.
Anything he hasn't used in a year is gone.
I have stuff that hasn't been used in 12 years since I moved. I'm starting to shred it for disposal.
Expired insurance policies for instance. Why keep them when you have the new one?
 
I threw all my old photos away and store the memories in my head. When you are coming to the end of the line, it's going to be mighty sad to look at them and see what was and never will be again. Always look foreword; never back.
 
I have old family photos from pictures that my mom and dad took over their lifetime, and some from when my mom was a girl. My kids love those old pictures, and we have them scanned into my photo stream, and then put into family “share albums”.
Some of the old pictures my mom had labeled, but some of them don’t say enough to help know what it is about, and we just had to guess. Once I am gone, my kids would have had no idea what some of the older pictures were , so I have been writing as much information as I can about each picture.
The photos themselves, I sorted and put in labeled envelopes, to make it easier for someone else to go through if they want to do that, and the whole thing is in a large folder to protect the pictures.
Since we had the dna done for Ancestry and 23&me, we have also put some of the family photos on the website for other related people to find.

This picture is my mom and dad, on their trip from Idaho to California, back around 1929.

FB1A9691-C843-443D-ACB1-2FBCC457C23D.jpeg
 
I had over 11,000 digital pictures on my old tower machine, plus other unscanned ones in boxes/albums. Any picture that did not have a person in it was pitched, which was a lot of vacation pictures. Old family photos from my childhood or before were all kept. My son will get all of these at some point.
 
I sold a lot of old photos on eBay. In the price range of $7.99 to $19.99. That is each picture. Many were taken by my mother and were pretty old. You know how boring vacation photos can be? Not to everyone. I sold so many of them I could not believe it myself. Pictures that have vintage items in the picture, such as old toys, cars, kitchen settings, etc. Even old black and white photographs of weddings or christenings. All photos of cars or old buildings, such as gas stations or stores. It is a good way to pick up a few dollars and easy to send.
 
I had to help my brother clear out my mother's place back in Oct.-Nov. last year as she had gone to a care home and her house was sold. We had a limited time to do the "purge". I swear my parents kept everything they ever had so it was a daunting task. Took a full month and there were about 6 large boxes of photos. I went through every one of them. I took a few that struck my fancy and for historical sake but the bulk of them ended up with my brother who said he wanted to look at them over the winter. What we'll do with them, I have no idea. Can't see them being of interest to generations that follow, other than a mere curiosity perhaps.
It's great now that you can just store everything in "the cloud". That cloud must be getting pretty heavy by now!
 
I finally made a decision to toss a number of albums. These were all of me and my late wife on our travels. We had no children, and I could not think of anyone who would be interested, especially my current wife.
 
All 70,000 plus, of mine are in the cloud. Most of mine are digital, but the ones I inherited from my childhood I took photos of and they're now digitally stored... although I still have several paper albums of my daughter...
 
I'm hoping one of my grand nieces will take my mother's albums. It worries me. Mom went to a lot of loving care to create them.
 


Back
Top