This past year, I have been trying to decide what I really wanted to do with my business. After spending 9 years in the scrapbook industry and then starting PhotoBooks{etc}, I have developed a passion for photos. I especially love old photos and have a collection of historical wedding dress photos. They tell a story of the time they were taken.
I have developed a great appreciation and at the same time a great fear for old photos. Everyone has them, but no two family members seem to have the same photos and, at the same time, no one would DARE let an old family photo out of their hands long enough for someone else to get a copy made. I call it "Photo Hoarding" - which is sort of unfair. If you won't let someone else makes copies, then PLEASE make copies yourself and send them off. The result of photo hoarding is a whole lot of people who don't get to see a whole lot of historical photos from their family. I have seen people fight and yell at each other over family photos. With modern technology, there's no reason for this. Play nice and share your photos, people!
Additionally, many of those photos are rubber-cemented onto black pulpy paper in old cardboard photo albums (or those criminal "magnetic" sticky albums that are soaking your photos in an acid bath). Who knows what's happening to those photos. The album above is one of those old pulpy albums. It's one my mom gave me to scan. But, it's stuffed full of photos and would take me WEEKS to scan them all on my flat bed scanner. I've had the album for some time but just lack the time to sit down, gently remove the photos and scan them one-by-one. She has probably half a dozen of these that she got from my Grandmother. They all desperately need to be scanned (and shared). I have been talking to my husband about it a lot lately. The other night I plopped this album on the table and said, "THIS is why I want that scanner. I want to help my mom and everyone else get these photos on to discs they can use and share." That's when he said, "Go order the scanner".
So, I have decided to save the old photos of the world (at least as many as I can). Today, I purchased the Grand Dame of photo scanners - a Kodak PS410. I've had my eye on it for a couple of years when it's predecessor was demonstrated during my presentation at The Photo Marketing Association Trade Show (PMA) to the delight of the photo retailers in the room. It's a batch scanner that you can drop a stack of photos into and in one minute, it will scan about 30 of them. They can easily be fixed and burned to a CD to share. GLORIOUS!!! I will spend more time removing the photos from the above album than I will scanning them.
My other desire is to digitize current photos so they can be used in photo books and just plain be backed up and saved. I know I would be DEVASTATED if I lost all the photos in our house. Scanning them provides another way to preserve them and in the future, if my kids want additional copies, I don't have to dig through thousands of negatives to find the photos they want.
I will shortly be adding scanning services to my business for local customers. Look for pricing and details at this site under the PHOTO SCANNING tab in the near future. If you are not a local (Seattle area) customer who can take advantage of my new scanning services, please find a way to scan and share any photos of historical value in your home.
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