I had the great idea a couple of years ago to scan all (yes, ALL) of my Mom's photos from her albums and boxes of photos for her Christmas present.
First, I researched photo scanners and there are a lot! I don't remember a lot of details cause that was a couple of years ago, but I remember there are mixed reviews and lots of different choices but really only 1 or 2 that would be of use to me. I really wanted one that is small and portable and that would be the least amount of work (duh!). I also thought it'd be great if I could scan them with my iPad. All that narrowed the selection to just about one. Luckily it wasn't horrible, just a little better than horrible, but it got the job done with minimum head ache (rescanning, skewed scans, crashes, etc). This is the one that I got:
Kaiser Baas iPad Photo Scanner just in case you're looking for one. FYI, my husband hates it, it never works well for him, but I think it just gave out, it was good for one long run of scanning and that was it. At least I got my Mom's Photos scanned before it gave out.
I managed to get hundreds and hundreds of photos scanned during the 2 weeks at my Mom's that year. Peeling that magnetic type cover from old albums to get at the photos (some of which wouldn't peel up anymore), carefully plucking ooooold photos from ancient albums (the kind with the little black envelope corners holding in black and white photos with gorgeous scalloped edges, trudging through boxes and boxes of photos (I think we all just gvve up doing albums at one point and started shoving photos in boxes... maybe when it started becoming cheaper to take photos; cameras got cheaper, film got cheaper and had more shots per roll, developing got much cheaper; there ended up being just too many photos to keep up with and too little time to put them all nicely in albums). The scanning was a chore, for sure, but a welcome one. I really thought it'd be awesome to have all the old photos digital, safe and easily sharable. I'm not even sure how much longer some of those old photos would last, some were already severely faded.
Anyway, fast forward 2 years and I'm heading to my Mom's again for Christmas. ...and I still don't have the photos edited and shared. :( So I'm [quite desperately] doing them now... and remembering why I haven't done them in all this time. It's a PITA. First, nothing was really in order when I scanned them (semi, but not really) so I tried to divide them by births, lol, (photos before me, photos after first grandkids, photos after Tiago (my husband), photos after second grand kid (my son)... things pretty much went strictly digital after that. On top of that, nothing scans straight, so I have to straighten them. Also, at the time of scanning, I thought it was a great idea to scan two photos at once for some of the photo pages so now I have to duplicate each scan and crop them into 2 separate photos, etc. etc. etc. *sigh* Still, it's worth all the effort, right? Yes, definitely! I have just over 4 weeks to get them finished and shared somewhere (which is a whole other issue in itself).
Here are some of the really old photos that I adore:
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| Awwwwww..... |
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| What do you think? The original photo bomb? :) |
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| Ultimate shot with the grandparents. This is my Mom and Aunt with their Grandma and Grandpa. |
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| I love to see that people were just as goofy in the very stuffy 50s-60s as they are today. |
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| My Grandmother. The goofiest person I know. (bare ankles, isn't she cold?) |
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| Wow! That is one period photo there. That wallpaper, that dining set, the hair... lolol. |
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| I don't understand this photo. Aren't they afraid at all that the cake will end up on the floor? |
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| So coiffed for goofing off at the river! |
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| My Grandma again! The guy she's with was really trying to keep straight-faced, lol. |
Well, back to editing. I'm excited to get these up for my Mom, and all the family, to see and comment on!!!
-xo deb.
