Can Your Photographs Become Obsolete?

Photographs are meant to last a lifetime or longer. Sure, you take new photographs to update a look, a grandchild growing up, or an addition to your home but they are not intended to replace old photographs. New photographs of the same person, place or event help extend and tell a story. An old photograph never becomes obsolete, they become comforting antidotes to the stresses living life. 

Family photographs are the first possessions that victims of a tragedy, like a house fire or flood, state that they will miss the most. New technologies enable us to  digitally scan and create electronic files from old prints, rejuvenating the image to their original look. Digitized photographs become ageless possessions that can evoke some wonderful conversations among multiple generations. Installing a selection of electronic files on an  8" digital photo frame with high resolution can help people downsize the physical space that photo albums and make viewing favorite photographs much more convenient. Pressing a button is much easier that retrieving, opening, holding, and sharing stories while look at 3" x 5" image pasted in an album or scrapbook. 

Scanning old photos prevents loss or damage when the glue gives out or a print escapes from it corner mount and falls to the bottom of its storage box. We offer other ideas about taking care of photographs as well as other important, long-lasting possessions within our "Important Things Index" at OurHeritageVault.com.

Digitized Photos Let You Enjoy the Memories when Moving On

There is often lots of trauma surrounding the break up of a household. Whether its time for grandma and grandpa to relocate to another home that's more suitable for their advancing years, or a middle-aged couple who have fallen out of love, what's the appropriate disposition for all those photographs that chronicle the happy times of a lifetime or two?

Digitizing old photographs is a great way to reduce storage space and share the happy memories. When families downsize to a new home, there never seems to be enough storage space in the new place. With planning, scanning and creating electronic files of photographs are a great way to sort through and save photos that are important to a family's heritage. They can provide some lighter moments of conversation within the context of the stress that a major move brings on. 

Saving digitized files to an SD memory card and backing them up to an online service makes them available for sharing. Installing the SD memory card in digital photo frame, let's grandma and grandpa conveniently display their treasured photos in their new home which may psychologically help them adjust to their new surroundings.

Even divorcing couples may want to look beyond their current adversity and want to share the memories of times less painful, like photos of children growing up, places visited, and pets remembered. 

It may be easier to just box up the old photo albums and move them, but it's not as much fun. Our website, Our Heritage Vault, offers some ideas about how to tackle this project as well as other items you may want to digitize and save. 

Remember: To start, pick out your favorite photos, not more than a couple dozen, and digitally scan them. You can always add more. In the meantime, take a look at the clothes, the hairdos, the old cars, and start smiling!