Unlocking Countless Memories: Digitizing Millions of Old Printed Photos in Storage

Starting off with a boy who has limited recollections of his late father, who passed away when he was just 7 years old, this story may appear melancholic. However, the significance of the only photograph Mitch Goldstone possesses with his dad, captured at Disneyland in the late 1960s, holds immense value. During that era, the idea of individuals instinctively reaching for pocket-sized smartphone cameras was confined to the realm of Tomorrowland.

But this story and the personal stories that follow are not sad at all. And half a century later and more, Goldstone has done something with that memory.

He pursues a career focused on the joy of rediscovery. He and his longtime partner, Carl Berman, run ScanMyPhotos, part of a specialty industry that specializes in turning billions of analog slides, undeveloped negatives and prints taken in the pre-smartphone era into digital treasure chests full of forgotten memories. .

“There’s nothing else like it, so few companies do something that makes people cry when they get the product back,” says Goldstone. “Luckily, they’re usually happy tears.”

Giving analog photos new digital life can bring out long-buried memories and make them feel fresh. It can bring back the sound of water in old vacation photos, bring long-absent relatives to life at their best, and rekindle the warmth of a childhood pet’s unconditional love. It can remind you of the complexities of family relationships, bring out forgotten moments, and—perhaps best of all—make them easy to share.

It happened to me. Finally, after many years of procrastination, I decided to have a professional scan the thousands of Kodachrome slides I inherited from my 81-year-old father when he passed away in 2019.

I hadn’t been able to look at them – not from an emotional point of view, but because I didn’t have the proper hardware to go through analog slides. Converting them into easy-to-use digital media started me on a journey back to my own childhood and the past of my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. That, in turn, gives me a better understanding of how I became who I am.

It’s a phenomenon shared by other people who have taken steps to preserve analog photographs painstakingly taken decades before smartphones allowed people to routinely take pictures of everything.

It’s not cheap. But if you have the $200 to $300 that’s likely to pay for the process—and if you have the time to dig through musty boxes, crates, and garages—you might find a gateway to such experiences.

THE LAST FATE OF AN ACTRESS

During his award-winning acting career, Ed Asner became famous for his acting but lovable characters, most famously Lou Grant – the newsroom boss in two popular TV series, “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” from 1970 to 1977 and the eponymous. spinoff from 1977 to 1982. Asner also provided the voice of gruff Carl Fredricksen in Pixar’s 2009 animated film “Up,” which featured a poignant scene about the power of photography to rekindle memories.

After Asner died in 2021, a similar scene took place. His son Matt found hundreds of undeveloped negatives. He decided to digitize them along with the stock of printed images.

“Honestly, I didn’t know what I was going to get back,” says Matt Asner. “It’s kind of overwhelming. It’s like you’re getting this treasure back that opens your eyes to the past that you kind of remember. But a lot of it you don’t remember.”

Looking at his father’s photos rekindled memories that Matt didn’t know were buried in his subconscious. One day, Matt was looking at pictures taken of him when he was 3 or 4 years old at a Southern California beach house that his father rented for the family for the summer. One shot in particular opened the cartridge.

“In this picture I have a dead fish, and I had a wild memory of finding it on the beach and keeping it with me for four days,” the boy recalls. “My mom finally threw it away while I was sleeping because it smelled so bad. It was a very strong memory that I had forgotten.”

Digital conversions of old photos of Ed Asner also yielded other visual gems, including one of the actor as a young man looking at himself in a mirror – perhaps preparing for the role. Matt is now sharing some of his favorite photos of his dad on his Twitter account. but what he likes most is sending them to relatives – the digital format makes it easy.

“Some of these images haven’t been seen for 40, 50 or even 60 years,” Matt Asner marvels. “It’s like opening up a strange world to everyone and it brings you closer together as a family. My father and mother were a kind of glue for the whole family. Now these images replace some of the glue that has gone away.”

THE DIPLOMAT’S JOURNEY

After retiring in 2021 from a long career as a US diplomat working around the world, Lyne Paquette returned to her home in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and retrieved from storage the 12,000 photos she had taken with her film camera during her extensive work. varying journeys. After months of sorting through them all, Paquette sent about 3,500 to be digitized.

When Paquette got them back, he was transported back to so many places he had been assigned or visited—several countries in Central and South America, Australia, Germany, Bangladesh, Syria and Vietnam. Although she loves to reminisce about all the good times with all her friends, some of her favorite photos are of her late parents.

“It brings back so much happiness, but sometimes sadness,” Paquette, 67, says. “I see now: I’ve had a very, very rich life.”

WAR CORRESPONDENT’S PORTFOLIO

Russell Gordon worked in 20 countries as a photographer on assignments that took him to wars, including Bosnia. So yes, he collected a lot of analog photos, slides and negatives in his career. He digitized 200 of his favorites, including one-of-a-kind shots like a photo of a fellow journalist in Afghanistan who was eventually murdered by the man he interviewed in the photo.

“I was like a kid at Christmas and I was so excited,” says Gordon, 58, recalling the digital transformation.

He was not disappointed. The memories embedded in the photos are even more precious to him because he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after years of filming horrific wars. “I have a little bit of quality of life now, but my life now is largely about nostalgia,” says Gordon. “So this is such a gift.”

The experience has made him more convinced that those with analog photos should digitize them as soon as they get the chance.

“Life happens and people die,” he says with a sigh. “When you’re gone, unless you leave money behind, the only thing you leave behind are photographs.”

THE GEOLOGIST’S DISCOVERY

Clifford Cuffey inherited a passion for geology and photography from his father, who died last year.

These commonalities combined for Cuffey to find himself with more than 100,000 photographs, including some 70,000 Kodachrome slides, that he had taken between 1985 and 2009 on cameras equipped with manual Olympus and Nikon lenses. Many of the photos were taken during his travels, which revolved around his interest in geology – his chosen profession.

And his father, a professor of geology at Penn State University, had left behind similar photos taken on summer trips when Cuffey and his brother met as children. But there were also other pictures dedicated to hobbies, such as trains and railways that no longer exist, old pets and of course family photos.

Cuffey, 55, has spent more than $20,000 digitizing the best of his analog photo collection to help achieve his goal of starting a geology-focused website. But the investment also pays real emotional dividends.

“These were the fun things I did growing up,” says Cuffey. “Every time I look at my scans I have a big smile on my face and I’m very glad I did it.”

SOME OPTIONS FOR DIGITIZING OLD PHOTOS

With so many images, slides and other visual media still limited to analog, digitization has become a cottage industry. As with any service or product, it makes sense to do your research to determine which service sounds best for your needs. But here are some tips.

— Based on its research, Consumers Guide Review recommends these as the best places: iMemories, .egacyBox and ScanMyPhotos. Other photo scanning sites with positive reviews include GoPhoto, .canCafe, Memories Renewed. ScanDigital. DiJiFi and digital memories.

—If you don’t want to hand over your old photos to strangers or if you think scanning services are too expensive, you can do it yourself. But it requires technical expertise, patience and proper equipment.

-If you’re a fan of Amazon, the e-commerce site compiles a list of what it believes to be the best products. PC Magazine recommends these products. If you google and research through another search engine, you will find many other suggestions for scanning all the images yourself.