A Trifecta of Resources for Digitizing Your Family Photos

Digitize Your Family Photos Value Pack

Are your family photos stored here, there and everywhere? Wish you could fix those faded and discolored old pictures...[Read More]

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure." Colin Powell


Do any of these sound like you?
"I have shoeboxes full of old photos."
"I have to find a way to better organize the digital pictures and files on my computer."
"Where do I start with all this stuff that I just inherited from my family's archive?"


Knowledge is Power
If so, then perhaps one of the first places to start is to seek out fundamental knowledge from reliable sources in order to save a lot of expense and aggravation later on.


One of the easiest ways available to start learning about digitizing your family's photos is self-guided independent study courses, such as those offered by Family Tree University, powered by Family Tree Magazine & FW Media. They have recently assembled a collection to help you build a digital archive of your family's cherished memories called The Digitize Your Family Photos Value Pack.


Learning Tools That Will Make a Difference
The pack is available for under $70 and includes 3 powerful learning tools offering a wide range of information from industry renowned instructors about organizing photos, creating digital images, archiving digital images, and sharing family memories.


The Digitize Your Family Photo Value Pack includes valuable knowledge about:

• Strategies for organizing photo prints and digital photos
• Storage solutions for fragile photos
• Naming patterns to keep track of your digital files
• Digital photo terminology 
• The pros and cons of four popular photo-sharing sites
• Things to watch out for when sharing photos online
• A genealogist's guide to digital photography, with hints for capturing gravestones, heirlooms, documents, and more
• Digital camera buying tips
• Photo taking tips
• 3 secrets to scanning quickly and efficiently
• Batch scanning services
• A comparison of four online photo sharing services where you can store and share your images
• 4 steps to back up your files to an external hard drive

Armed and Ready to Go!
As an end result of taking a little time out to engage in the learning process, you will gain knowledge and be able to actually implement new skills as you incorporate what you have learned into your life.

Digital Directions sponsor E-Z Photo Scan can help you get started archiving your photos digitally! Click to learn more about photo scanners, training, and service options that are right for you or your organization.

Have Photos To Scan? 4 Options Await!

Preserving the past is a part of our make-up. It is who we are as humans. 

To be human is to collect things. We instinctively reach out to connect in order to add a sense of identity of who we are and what we have been through. Ultimately, this process shapes our futures.

And, over the past century photographs have come to comprise much of how we have chosen to record key events, places, people, and things.

These frozen likenesses allow us to peer into our heritage offering insight never before available. Preserving our photographs emblazons our collective identity and helps in connecting our past. Photoscanning moves photographs recorded onto paper or other types of media, into the digital world we presently live.

Options to have your photographs scanned can be divided into 4 basic classifications. These include:

1. Central Bulk Plant Operators
These plant-based locations are designed specifically to accommodate large production photoscanning. These operations seek to optimize their operations and maximize the advantages this strategy offers with economies of scale and leveraging centralized expertise. To use one of these organizations you will most likely have to box your photos up and send them to their central scanning location. The actual scanning work may be done on location in the United States or outsourced to an off-shore location, in order to minimize labor costs.

2. Regional Service Providers
Regional providers of photo scanning services generally operate within a primary geographical area. This permits them to work directly with their clients and address the specifics of an individual project. Many regional service providers combine photoscanning with other services that are complimentary in nature. Work is generally done at the provider’s location by their staff.

3. Photo Organizing/Scanning Services
These boutique services come to you and provide a personal level of support. According to the Association of Personal Photo Organizers:


"Personal Photo Organizers are independent business owners, offering photo services that are as unique as you are – whether you just need some help getting and staying organized, would like to create a special album, or need a new system for creating annual albums . . . [They] provide highly personalized, one-on-one consultation from the moment you contact us. Once selected, your Photo Organizer will meet with you face-to-face, walking you through each step of your photo decision-making process, carefully listening to your preferences, and developing a needs analysis and cost estimate based on what you want to accomplish."

4. DIY (Do It Yourself) Project
An abundant selection of photo scanning equipment for those ambitious enough to tackle it as a DIY project is available, including solutions to rent professional equipment. With a little research, proper pre-planning, basic organization skills, the right equipment, and enough time, it is quite possible to produce quality results in a DIY scan project.


A New Resource: PhotoScanningForum.com
A new listing, www.photoscanningforum.com, is currently being created to help offer information to individuals who have photos and are looking for options to get them scanned. It has identified over 600 photo scanning services throughout the U.S. from the first 3 groups and hopes to offer a way for individuals to research the best answer for them, including finding solutions to rent professional equipment or research photo scanning equipment before purchasing for those who are looking to complete a DIY project.

Interested in photo scanning equipment? Let Digital Directions sponsor E-Z Photo Scan help.

Monday's Featured Photo Blog

Monday's Featured Photo Blog: Brilliant Light Paintings

By: Brian Hart

Friday's Video: Why does E Z Photo Scan scan all of your photos instead of just a few?

Why does E-Z Photo Scan scan all of your photos instead of picking and choosing just a few select shots?

There are two basic approaches to photo scanning: the selective approach and the inclusive approach. In this video, we take a look at why the inclusive approach is the best solution for your photos.

 

Louis Daguerre Google doodle

Google celebrates Louis Daguerre's 224th birthday. The doodle shows an old-fashioned photograph.

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787 - 1851) was a French artist and physicist. In his time he became famous as a theatrical illusion-designer. Today he is recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype (1839). The daguerreotype is a single image which is not reproducible. It was the first commercially successful photographic process.


The doodle shows a family. The father is Daguerre himself. Daguerre died 1851.


Happy Birthday, Louis Daguerre.

The Art of Food Photography

The pictures can be tantalizing. Some even cause us to stop and stare. Join us, for a behind the scenes look at a food photographer and his team as they create sumptuous images out of fresh ingredients that seem to jump off the page.

To watch more stories, Food News, or Cooking Fresh videos, visit: http://cookingupastory.com

Monday's Featured Photo Blog

Monday's Featured Photo Blog: Leaving  A Disposable Camera in the Park

By: Katie O'Beirne

Strawberry Fields

"This started off as just a weekend project. After friends and family viewed the photos from my camera launch, they suggested I make this a more serious endeavor!
 
I have recently been placing disposable cameras in New York's lovely parks (the last two parks being Brooklyn Bridge Park and Prospect Park). I also include a note, stating that if passers-by would like to be a part of this ongoing project, they should snap a photo of themselves. The way they choose to shoot the photo is up to them, though, the more faces on film, the BETTER."

-Katie O'Beirne

Friday's Video: The Real Kodak Moment Happens When You Share

Your photos are fading. Help them live forever through Kodak Photo Scanning.

Protect Your Photos With 4 Easy Steps

I3A Educational Website - SaveMyMemories.org

An Industry Comes Together to Educate

I3A — the not-for-profit International Imaging Industry Association, is the nexus of the global imaging ecosystem, the global go-to organization for making images easier to create, view, work with, share, preserve, or integrate into your offerings. From this association, a select group of members of the International Imaging Industry Association have contributed to the development of a special educational website dedicated to helping consumers understand better how to save their digital photo memories.

Memory-Keeping Techniques

The SaveMyMemories.org website offers valuable insight into understanding what the demands dealing with digital imaging has had on memory-keeping techniques, as compared to traditional film and paper photo print or slide imaging.

In the Learn section of the website there is information on topics about hardware, software and other factors such as aging of storage materials, technical obsolescence, fading, natural disasters, and theft/loss. Other sections include Prepare, Protect, Recover, and Resources. 


The Quick Start - 4 Easy Steps

SaveMyMemories.org also includes a Quick Start guide to protecting your photos with 4 easy steps. I3A has identified these 4 steps as:

1. Protect your pictures
2. Get organized
3. Stay informed
4. Stick to it

A free PDF download of this Quick Start Overview is also available.

Changing Times - More Photos Than Ever - Support From An Industry

Digital photography is growing at an exponential rate. More photos are being born digital using digital cameras or mobile devices enabled with cameras, than ever before. Meanwhile, photographs are now able to be converted into digital images from their once analog film-based state through photo scanning.


I3A is to be commended for bringing to bear the resources to provide education, offer expertise and support safe environmental practices for the photographic and mobile imaging markets for advancing the industry, and to enable better products and services for its customers.

Wonder what your options are for quality photo scanning services? Visit Digital Directions sponsor E-Z Photo Scan to find out more.

Digital Techniques Meet 19th Century Photograph Types

Ambrotype example from Luminous-Lint.com collection

You Press the Button...

It was George Eastman, founder of Kodak, that coined the slogan, "you press the button, we do the rest," when he introduced the Kodak camera in 1888. It became one of the most well known advertising phrases of the late 19th century. 

Photography has evolved and now in the 21st century, solid-state micro computer technological wonders have made pressing the button easier, or automatic, with ever amazing instantaneous results. 

Bringing the Past into the Future

Yet, looking back over the advancement of photography from its early beginnings offers us the chance to realize the raw power that 'light writing' has had on the very fabric of our lives. In comparison to current day standards, what may appear to be archaic and crude photographic techniques of yesterday offered photographers a way to record life onto a variety of media ranging from paraffin paper, glass, and tin with astounding effect.

A late 20th century phenomenon has allowed the digitization of these treasured works to be kept and preserved for the ages by converting them into digital imagery. This same technology has permitted countless others to share and connect with them through online collections available across the entire globe. 

A Fine Art Photography Online Collection

Luminous-Lint.com is one of the most respected website specializing in Fine Art Photography. It is the ultimate online resource for collectors and connoisseurs offering authoritative reference materials, online exhibitions, expert commentaries and reviews, press releases, calendars of auctions, exhibitions and shows, a specialist online bookstore, and much more.

This collection offers an Introduction to 19th Century Photograph Types that is is appealingly orchestrated by its curator Alan Griffiths, with contributions from numerous photographers and collectors. It includes both clear and easy-to-understand introduction dialogue with samples of a variety of photographic types including:

• Daguerreotypes
• Waxed paper negatives
• Salt prints 
• Cyanotypes
• Albumen prints 
• Ambrotypes 
• Tintypes 
• Photogravures 
• Woodburytypes 
• Early Kodak camera formats

Visitors to this online collection have a window into the past, thanks to the digital technologies of today.

Do You Have Vintage Photos?

Do you have vintage photos buried within your families photo treasures and want to learn more about the various photograph types? Collections like Luminious-Lint are a great way to start. In addition, genealogy websites, such as Olivetreegenealogy.com have tutorials on identifying vintage photograph types and their origins.

We owe it to future generations where picture taking -based upon today's benchmark- will be simpler, faster, and more automatic than imaginable to keep and protect, then share and connect with our photographs of yesterday.

Digital Directions sponsor E-Z Photo Scan can help you get started archiving your photos digitally! Click to learn more about photo scanners, training, and service options that are right for you or your organization.

The Future of the Photography Museum

What’s Next Logo © Foam

"The best way to predict the future is to create it." Peter Drucker

Foam, enables people all over the world to experience and enjoy photography. It encompasses a museum in Amsterdam, website, internationally distributed magazine, and Editions department.

Foam is for photographers, picture editors, designers and all those who have a passion for photography. And, this month Foam is celebrating its tenth anniversary by inviting four different experts from the cultural field to offer their insight on how a photography exhibition can be presented in the future.
Guest curator, Erik Kessels takes on the topic of the exponentially sharing of photos online in his exhibition entitled, "Photography in abundance."

24 hrs photos installatie 2011 © Erik Kessels C Gijs van den Ber

24 hrs photos installatie © Erik Kessels C Gijs van den Ber

Everyone now takes photos and shares them with the world using online sites such as Facebook or Flickr, resulting in countless photos at our disposal. Kessels visulizes this "drowning in pictures of the experiences of others" by printing all the images that were posted on Flickr during a 24-hour period and dumping them in the exhibition space. The end result is an overwhelming presentation of a million prints.

This photo sharing explosion is the future being created now. As the avalanche of photography to share and connect grows, Kessels' exhibit drives home just how astonishing things are to come for the photography museums of the future.

24 hrs photos installatie 2011 © Erik Kessels C Gijs van den Berg

What's Next?

The Future of the Photography Museum

Guest curators: Lauren Cornell, Jefferson Hack, Erik Kessels, Alison Nordström 

5 November - 7 December 2011

Do your photos have a story to tell? Digital Directions is sponsored by E-Z Photo Scan. Learn how photo scanning services and equipment can help you to keep, protect, share, and connect with your photos.

Monday's Featured Photo Blog

Monday's Featured Photo Blog: These Fleeting Moments

By: Jason Ertel

Carnegie Lake On a Fall Morning

Friday's Video: Kodak Gallery - Live Forever (Long Version)

Your photos are fading. Help them live forever through Kodak Photo Scanning.

Scanned Old Photos Turned Into Gold

Old photographs far too often end up being stashed into boxes and placed away in some forgotten dark, dingy corner.


But now, because of a revival of interest in vintage photos some are beginning to see the light of day once again.

Collecting Antique & Vintage Photographs

A network of collectors across the globe has now formed, dedicated to promoting the hobby of collecting antique and vintage photography. Although the possibilities for collecting photographs are as endless, websites like OldPhotoAuctions, have listed as popular areas for photography collecting:

• Daguerreotypes
• Ambrotypes
• Tintypes
• CDV's
• Cabinet Cards
• Vernacular Photography
• Civil War Photographs
• Children Photographs
• Scenic photographs
• Portrait Photographs
• Famous People Photos
• And More!

Lost Faces

More and more, individuals are showing up to antique auctions, stores, flea markets, and garage sales looking to add to their growing collections of genealogical and historical treasures. This is in spite of the fact all of the faces staring back in the photographs purchased are total strangers.

The value of these type of photos varies. According to Cre8tiveStores.com, where you can buy old photos, antiques photographs and photographic memorabilia:


"Among collectors, certainly not all antique photos have high value. There are certain events that pictures are taken of that are worth more than others. For example, an antique photo of a wedding party is worth more than just a random picture. And of course pictures of famous people such as Abraham Lincoln have tremendous value. But even wedding party pictures have differing values, the more people in the picture the higher the value of the photo."

From Pros to Amateurs

It is now possible to purchase digital files of old vintage photos online to use as stock photography or simply to print and frame for your own. 

Old photos and vintage posters are available from sites like Retro SnapShots for use as stock photography in various graphic projects such as websites, postcards, brochures, etc. These are digital files available as high resolution downloads. They are great for designers and artists who may need a vintage photo for their design project, or just as a way to save some time and print the photo themselves.

Both professionals and amateurs are getting in on the act of turning old photos into gold by selling them using one of the many options to sell photos online.

Old Photos Resources

If you collect vintage photographs, like to view interesting old photos and read articles about those vintage photos, or are looking to add/sell some great antique images to/from your photography collection, consider checking out Old Photographic: The Online Vintage Photography Magazine.


Who knows...you may soon be digging out your old photos and scanning them in search of gold!

Do your photos have a story to tell? Digital Directions is sponsored by E-Z Photo Scan. Learn how photo scanning services and equipment can help you to keep, protect, share, and connect with your photos.

Photo Sharing Explodes

There is a photo sharing explosion! At the heart of it all are the 600 million+ Facebook users around the world connecting to friends through the common language of photos.

According to recent estimates, at the current rate of 6 billion photos uploaded each month, by the summer of 2011, there were about 100 billion photos on Facebook.

A Different Way to Share
With hundreds of millions of photos and videos being shared every day it’s easy to miss out on the ones that actually matter to you. Pixable finds the best photos and videos shared on your social network so you never miss an important moment. Founded in 2009, Pixable is headquartered in SoHo, NYC with MIT roots.

According to the company’s website, Pixable has enabled over a million users to manage and enjoy their online photos with a powerful set of features centered around photo search, discovery, aggregation, and editing. The company’s free application offers a unique, personalized browsing experience by aggregating photos from different social networks and then sorting them into fun feeds like “Best Photos of the Day” in order of their relevance to the user.

So, What Do We Know About All This Photo Sharing?

This past spring Pixable put together this fun Infographic to help portray what is going on in this exploding world of photo sharing . . .

Help support our blog's sponsor, E-Z Photo Scan, by visiting their website to learn more about why it is important to scan your photos.

Photograph Preservation - A Healthy Choice!

In the Prevention Magazine appearing November 2011, an article showed how preserving photographs and collecting other information about your family tree could actually save your life! 

While Digital Directions has previously explored the ways preserving photographs with photo scanning can connect the past, present and future, Prevention Magazine points out the possibility of these photos also being able to unlock types of heredity family medical mysteries. Understanding and collecting family root information, including family portraits, can potentially reveal the secrets to the risk of disease you and your family’s current generation could be exposed.

Through the Eyes of a Forensic Pathologist
Signs detectable by the naked eye can often provide insight into health issues making the preservation of those family portraits even more important. A pathologist studies disease and while most often their work is done under a microscope lens, the power of general observation can play a big part in analyzing and accessing a person’s state of health. 

For instance, splotchy skin, droopy muscles on a specific side of the face, or extra skin fold in the inner corner of the eyes next to the nose can all be visual clues of inherent genetic conditions.

Does It Run In My Family?
According to the Genetics Science Learning Center at the University of Utah, it is estimated that heart disease, cancer and diabetes account for 7 of every 10 deaths in the United States. Like rare genetic disorders, these "common" diseases run in families and can therefore be considered genetic diseases. Because of this, a family history can provide important information about your family's risk of disease, including using the visual clues of family portraits to help fill in missing links in the family tree.

National Family History Day
The importance of families coming together to share their health histories has caught the attention the United States highest health official. Each year since 2004, the Surgeon General has declared Thanksgiving to be National Family History Day.

Over the holiday or at other times when families gather, the Surgeon General encourages Americans to talk about, and to write down, the health problems that seem to run in their family. Learning about their family's health history may help ensure a longer, healthier future together.

My Family Healthy Portrait Tool
The U.S. Surgeon General's "My Family Health Portrait" is an internet-based tool that makes it easy for you to record your family health history. The tool is easy to access on the web and simple to fill out. It assembles your information and makes a "pedigree" family tree that you can download. It is private and does not keep your information. It gives you a health history that you can share with family members or send to your health care practitioner.

So, get those old family photographs out and preserved and start you own family's healthy portrait . . . it could save your life!

Digital Directions sponsor E-Z Photo Scan can help you get started archiving your photos digitally! Click to learn more about photo scanners, training, and service options that are right for you or your organization.

Monday's Featured Photo Blog

Monday's Featured Photo Blog: David With a Camera

By: David

Fortune

Friday's Video: Quality - Organizing Your Photos

Your photos may be organized in albums, photo envelopes, or boxes today. How will they be organized once they are scanned as electronic files?

This video gives on overview of how photos received by E-Z Photo Scan are arranged once they are scanned and burned to disk. It also gives some ideas on how you might approach organizing your entire digital photo collection.

Learn about organizing your scanned photos at ezphotoscanning.com or visit our site to get started scanning photos, renting a photo scanner, or purchasing your own photo scanner.

Follow Digital Directions for the Best New Gadgets and Tech Trends in 2012!

Start following E-Z Photo Scan and Digital Directions now for exclusive, live coverage of 2012’s PMA@CES from January 10-13, 2012 in Las Vegas, Nevada!

Do you remember the first time that you tasted peanut butter and chocolate? Ah. Two great tastes that go great together. In some little way, your world was changed forever.

On January 10-13, 2012, metaphorical chocolate meets peanut butter as the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and Photo Marketing Association (PMA) join their shows together for the first time ever as the PMA@CES.

Can’t go? We’ve got you covered!

E-Z Photo Scan, a leader in archival-quality photo scanning services, photo scanner and photo scanning equipment sales, and photo scanner rentals, is sending a staff member live to the floor of The Venetian to show Digital Directions’ readers all of the best tech, gizmos, and trends for 2012 from the PMA@CES.

Whether you like gadgets in general or digital imaging in particular, follow E-Z Photo Scan’s Digital Directions NOW for news you can use leading up to, during, and after the conference.

Give us feedback about what you’d like to see! We’ll post as much text, commentary, and video highlights as we can for four whirlwind days!

    Twitter: twitter.com/ezphotoscan
    Facebook: facebook.com/ezphotoscan
    Official Digital Directions Blog: blog.ezphotoscanning.com

You’ll get the best coverage of ways that photography and digital imaging are converging with home entertainment and electronics. Video and text coverage areas will include photo scanning, film scanning, slide scanning, negative scanning, document imaging, book scanning, photo sharing, social media, image editing, digital television and display technologies, photo accessories, digital cameras and lenses, photo and document printers, the latest tablets and smartphones, archival media, backup systems, and more!

E-Z Photo Scan and the Digital Directions blog want to be your eyes and ears this January in Vegas. Follow us now. Tell a friend about our coverage. Let us know what you’d like to see.