Scanning Old Photos

I recently started scanning photos from my very first photo album. My mother started it when I was a newborn, and it even contains a few photos from before I was born. I have quite a few albums from the days before my first digital camera. Partly because I thought I had lost a very meaningful photo (which thankfully was eventually found), I decided to scan all of the ones I have. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for years, since photographs don’t last forever. I just never really had the time to do them all. I finally decided that I needed to start, even if I just did a few each day. So far, I’ve finished three albums (two were rather small), and I have some loose pictures in a box on my desk at home to do next. I really don’t care exactly how long it takes. I figure 30+ years of pictures can’t be scanned in just a few days! I get to as many as I can most days. I actually back them up on two separate external drives, just in case.

I’ve also been posting some of them online, with many different reactions from others. Some pictures, of course, are basically ignored. I’m sure some people have looked at them, but there are no comments or anything. That’s fine. Others, however, have received quite a bit of attention! I think some of the most popular ones have been group photos – Elementary school class pictures, or orchestra events. I love to see reactions of people I knew so well so many years ago!

The most important thing is that I’m preserving and protecting my images. Some people talk about just remembering things and not worrying so much about taking pictures. The thing is, our memories aren’t perfect. There’s also no way we can possibly remember everything. There are so many pictures already that have jogged my memory about events in my life that I probably would have otherwise forgotten. The way we look now is very different than how we used to look those many years ago. Also, I can’t share the visions in my mind with anyone else. That’s why my pictures are some of my most important possessions.

I imagine from the ‘likes’ and comments I’ve been getting that my scanned images are also of some value to others. I’ve made contact with a few people I haven’t seen or heard from in decades, which is fun. I’m really enjoying the process of adding the pictures to the external drives and sharing with others online. There haven’t been any negatives, either. The closest I got was one person who was not happy about a particular picture he was in. He very politely mentioned it to me, and I quickly deleted it. It was the first time I had talked to him since we were children, and it was interesting to see how he looked now, and catch up a bit.

I look forward to more memories as I make my way through the rest of the pictures. I’ll probably still share some of them with others, and perhaps spend a few minutes online here and there with people from my past. I think that this is also helping people connect with each other, too!