I went through my over 40 photo albums a few years ago and the bad ones went in the recycling. I refused to let my family look at the ones I was throwing away (because they might want to keep them.) In most cases, I was like why did I even save this at all. Or here are 5 pictures of these same peoples from the same event, I will keep the best one.
I was able to cull something like 30% of my pictures.
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My approach has been different with film and digital pictures. I used one of the scanning services to scan all my film pictures (using negatives if I had them). Over a lifetime pre-digital we weren’t taking all that many pictures; I probably have under 1,000 including the ones I took and I got from my parents. As a side project I labeled many of them with the people and the occasion if I knew it or if it was on the back of the print, then shared them with my family (at least the photos that weren’t just me on vacation, which I assumed they would have little interest in). I have precious few pictures of older relatives. My hope is that by passing down family pictures perhaps some descendant 50+ years or now I’ll never meet will get a glimpse into who came before.
I’ve found that it’s often the incidental things in the pictures that are most captivating. Seeing in the background of a snapshot a candelabra my mother inherited from her mother reminds me how much she cherished it, how we used to see it all the time. A few ears of corn we grew next to the house one year when we were little. Or a picture of one of our dogs curled up beneath a table where she liked to sleep.
For digital pictures, I take way too many since I’m not a skilled photographer in hopes of getting some I like. After a trip I then go thru and delete 2/3rds or more and keep the ones I like best.
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My family has an album where all the photos are beautiful, and the bad ones are just hidden behind the good ones, like in an envelope. Thus, no one throws out photographs, but they are not always in sight. But at any time in your access.
We also have an old undeveloped film, I also think that this should not be thrown away.
For me, these are not only family memories, but also memories of the time.
I did like Thumper with her friend, went through and got rid of dupes, bad pics, pics that wouldn’t be meaningful for my grandkids, all those extra photos from school packages, every pack of negatives, etc. It may seem silly, but when we had to go through all my parents’ stuff and it was hard to throw things out like photos, souvenirs and such that had meaning to them, we used black trash bags - so once it went in you couldn’t see it and when they went in the dumpster, you didn’t remember exactly what was in the bag you carried out so it wasn’t as heart-wrenching to toss. My family now regularly uses the phrase “black bag it!” when we are having trouble parting with our stuff.
In the end, I am always way more relieved about having less stuff than dismayed about tossing it. No reason at all to keep extra photos that someone has to deal with later, IMHO.
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I have my mother’s albums. There are unbelievable numbers of pictures of them at diplomatic functions where I don’t know who any of the people are. I’m thinking about scanning them page by page, but I haven’t done it yet. I’s scanned some of the more obviously sentimental ones to share with my brothers. I fear neither of my boys will be interested in keeping any of this stuff. What really makes me sad, is that there are good photos from early in their marriage when they had decent pictures, but at some point they switched to Instamatics and Polaroids and the quality is horrible.
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We have a box of “stuff” for each of our kids. Each has a couple of terrific pics of their grandparents when they were younger. My gut feeling is…neither of them will care much about these when they finally take these boxes. All pics are labeled with the dates and locations where they were taken.
One thing to mention, if you scan the good photos at a high quality resolution then everyone can have a copy, physical or digital.
I did this recently with a small trove of photos of my dad’s family I found in a box. There are some great photos of him when he was a kid, from a chubby baby to a mischievous tween, to a teen working at a soda fountain, to him in his Navy uniform after he enlisted during WWII. I am a graphic designer so I scanned them at a high resolution and cleaned them up in Photoshop. My scans look better than the originals and print out well. I shared them with my siblings and cousins and anyone who wants a copy can print it out, or if they don’t want the clutter they can just look through them and save digital versions of the ones they want. I also included what was written on the back as a caption so you could see the handwriting, etc. Thankfully almost all of these were labeled on the back.
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Yes…we did this with a small framed picture collage that everyone in the family seemed to want. It was all digitized…and two ways…the way the aged black and white pictures looked (faded) and enhanced to look the way they looked when originally taken.
We had a bunch of DVDS made and gave to everyone…who could print, use as screen savers or whatever.
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These are all great suggestions. Thanks everyone. I’m going to feel much less guilty now about throwing out old pics.
They can be added to craft supplies with old magazines and other craft supplies. When we cull the things that are “bad,” there’s more space for the glorious ones to shine!
We also don’t keep old magazines. At all. We culled those a long while ago.
Well, if there’s space, I can see how photos can be included in craft supplies.
My mom brought over old photos she didn’t want anymore and my sister and I rummaged through them. I found a not great quality (a bit grainy because so old) photo of our family at my aunt’s house that I had never seen. I have only ever since 2 pictures of myself pre age one. In the photo, I look like I am just under a year old and held by my (now deceased) dad. I must have walked around with that photo the rest of the day. The only other 2 photos were when I was 3 months old with brother and sister on a couch and at @ 8 months when my mom would take each of her babies in for a picture by themselves at a local photography studio. I think my mom inherited the photo from her sister after she died. My sister decided to keep a military photo of our cousin from the 1970s. He died in October and the obituary and funeral program did not have a photo. His sister was the last of the family alive and didn’t have a photo. My sister brought the photo to the funeral and someone suggested she put it on the casket and it was well received. It was a nice photo of him. This is not exactly what you are talking about, but it reminded me of these moments. I tended to take way too many photos of my kids because I don’t have many childhood photos myself, so I think it is tough for me to throw out photos of their faces too, even if I already have a bunch and it isn’t that great of photo or quality. Someday I plan to weed it out a little more.
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