How do you preserve photos for your kids?

[Spartana]

Well as the luddite amongst the teckie nerds here :-) I have to admit that most of my photos are in a shoe box. Easiest way to store lots of old photos. I have been scanning them and saving them on my computer but it's slow. Any new photos I take are on a digital camera and I just save them to e-mail to friends and then often delete them. I have no kids and no one to leave my photos to anyways, so don't plan to save any more and am paring them down to just a few "special" ones that I'll keep for myself.

[ejchase]

Thanks, everyone, for your ideas.

I'm leaning towards the photo book option, I think, especially since I think I could get my SO's teenagers involved in making them (as an Xmas present for my SO).

But I also like the idea of organizing everything digitally really well and them backing it up frequently and getting them on DVD's.

[Fawn]

OK. I know I am an outlier here...but do we really need to have photos of everything?

My poor kids have on average 4-5 photos taken of them each year by me. A few more by their dad. A gazillion more by the family friend who is a professional photographer/videographer. They do not seem really interested in recording their life on film.

Having a life has little to do with a photographic record of it. I don't know....I do not get this obsession.

YMMV. Carry on.

[Spartana]

Thanks, everyone, for your ideas.

I'm leaning towards the photo book option, I think, especially since I think I could get my SO's teenagers involved in making them (as an Xmas present for my SO).

But I also like the idea of organizing everything digitally really well and them backing it up frequently and getting them on DVD's.

The photo book idea is nice but also be aware that your kids or grandkids may not want to, or have space to, store many photo albums - especially if they are like many younger people today who store everything digitally. A couple of CD's or whatever holds pretty much a large crate full of photo albums. I would LOVE to scan all the MANY MANY old family photo's in the MANY MANY albums my Mom left my sister and I when she passed and then get rid of all the actually photos and albums. But my sister wants to keep them so we do - several large plastic storage containers worth. So maybe asking your kids what they would like to do first and then go from there. If your kids want all the original photos in their orginal albums then start build albums. If they prefer digital media - photos on a CD - then I'd just save them for them that way. Not as nice to look at for us older people use to albums, but for younger people I think they don't really don't care. Less stuff to own, care for and store too. And in a fire or flood, it's much easier to grab your computer and a few CDs with your photos on them then it is to grab box loads of photo albums.

Like Fawn, I am not much of a photo person and only keep a few that are either irreplacable (like the few I have from my days in the coast guard), some travel photos (got rid of most and now rarely keep any travel photos I take - just e-mail them to friends and delete them) or have some sort of sentimental meaning - and only one or two of those photos.

[ejchase]

OK. I know I am an outlier here...but do we really need to have photos of everything?

My poor kids have on average 4-5 photos taken of them each year by me. A few more by their dad. A gazillion more by the family friend who is a professional photographer/videographer. They do not seem really interested in recording their life on film.

Having a life has little to do with a photographic record of it. I don't know....I do not get this obsession.

YMMV. Carry on.

I agree there can be a danger of overkill, and I don't want to burden my daughter with thirty photo albums, but I think there are positive things about having family pictures around. Seeing pictures of my siblings and me in my dad's house (we grew up across the country from him, and he was pretty distant emotionally, though he called and saw us often) reminded me we were important to him, and now that my mother has passed away, pictures of her remind me of the happiest times we had together on days when I can only remember the health struggles she faced and the relationship difficulties she had with us at one time or another. And all my life, seeing family pictures in my relatives' houses have given me a great sense of belonging and connectedness and a great sense of history and reminded me of the different stages of those relationships and the changes that have taken place.

Also, I am part of a newly "blended" family, and having pictures around of us on our first vacation all together, of my SO's kids with their new younger half-sister, and of my SO's kids and my SO before my daughter and I came into their lives are good reminders that all stages of their lives are welcome to be celebrated in the house. My SO's teenage son just showed us a slideshow he had to do for school introducing himself to his class. He included pictures of our branch of the family, as well as pictures of his mom and her friends. I think the photos gave him a way to integrate his not entirely "neat" family experience and give it a wholeness that may seem lacking at times.

I like the idea of just organizing everything really well digitally so my daughter and her siblings can deal with as much or as little of the pictures as they want to without having to cart around a lot of albums they may feel obligated to hold on to.

[Bomahmie]

I have had this same dilema. I am a picture junkie! I am afraid of losing my memories to a fire, or computer virus. I found that keeping one photo album with a few years of family memories on the coffee table was a fun reminder of all the things we've done. I am a big believer in living in the present, and I want to be reminded of all that I am greatful for in my life. To avoid over-kill I put several cds with all the pictures inside the album. Then I put memory card, duplicaite cd copies, sim cards, or flash drives in envelopes, with dates and events listed, and throw them in our safe. I know its a lot, but I like pictures and organization. And I'm not much for technology.

[lizii]

Being a sentimental one, I have a box full of photo albums of pictures of my kids when they were small, plus pictures I took on my various trips to Europe and Morocco.

I often dig them out to enjoy the memories. I also kept a notebook when I was travelling, to write down my daily experiences, which I also enjoy reading over and over again.

I had an album of pictures of my parents holding me when I was a baby, plus all my aunts and uncles when they were young kids, plus both grandmothers, and some of my maternal grandmother's wedding pictures. I don't know how many times she was married, but I was at two of the weddings. I gave that to one of my sons to keep.

My oldest aunt was born in Vancouver in 1900 and her 5 siblings, including my father, were all born here as well. From then on, we were all born in Vancouver, so we were pioneers here. Lots of memories about growing up here when Vancouver was still a small city in a far safer era than today.

I get a kick out of the way my grandmothers and aunts were dressed then--long skirts, leather boots, big floppy bows in the girls' long hair, boys wearing short pants, starched white shirts and ties. I saw my grandmother ironing clothes with an iron she heated up on the stove. She must have used a washboard and a bar of soap to scrub them clean and rinse them out in another bucket of clean water.

I saw my greatgrandmother once, but was too shy to say anything to her, but can just imagine what she'd seen and done when she was raising her children.

[Rosemary]

My DD loves to look through photo albums - both those with her in them and without.
When I was a girl I especially loved my grandmother's photo albums - lots of pics from the 1920s and 30s - life was so different. A few years ago I organized all her old pictures, which in her later years she had ripped out of albums, into new books with photo-safe paper. It was a winter project for me and took many hours, but now they are labeled as well as they ever will be and we can all enjoy them.

[Fawn]

ejchase--I totally get using photos to tell "The Story of Us" or any story for that matter. I do take a few photos throughout the year and save them (digitally now) and in boxes for the kids. There are family photos posted on our bulletin board in the kitchen. I love looking at family photos, new and old when I visit other people's homes. I do thoughtfully limit how much recording of their lives I do (music performances, video, still photography) because it began to feel that I was recording it, not experiencing it, and I didn't like the way that felt.

[ejchase]

ejchase-- I do thoughtfully limit how much recording of their lives I do (music performances, video, still photography) because it began to feel that I was recording it, not experiencing it, and I didn't like the way that felt.

I think this is a real danger. My Dad is much more comfortable taking pictures of his kids and grandkids than actually hanging out with them (though the older he gets, the better he gets at relating to us), but he was raised my two very severe alcoholics who totally neglected him, so he didn't have any role models of strong family relationships, so I try to be forgiving.

It's definitely true that sometimes it's important to put the camera away and just be in the moment.