Photo Albums

Sound familiar Tegan. Since having my first DGD I have found myself bringing down endless boxes of photos so I can show my own daughter how alike her and her daughter are. I then spend far too long reminiscing. I am about to be brave and have them all digitalised so I can store them on a disc along with my current photos. I'm sure when I'm no longer here the kids will happily trawl through digital photos rather than boxes of albums.

Good luck x

My teenage DGC love looking through our photo albums. They ask for them to be brought out and it is a novelty to them.

I don't think having photos on the computer is as satisfying than the physical experience of having them in a proper photo album.

I feel the same about having actual letters, rather than e-mails. Although I send e-mails for convenience, there is nothing to beat a typewritten, or better still handwritten, letter. In the future there will be no old letters to examine and cherish.

I've used photo binders and sleeves to hold photos supplied by www.arrowfile.com/index.php?route=common/home
At least with removable pages you don't have to get the chronological order correct the first time.
It's a daunting project though isn't it?

At least if they're in albums I can flick through and find photos I'm looking for. I used to spend hours doing our albums, with drawings relating to different events etc. How they just ended up being thrown in a draw is beyond me [I think it's when I went back to work part time]. What I am embarrassed about is how many rubbish photos I've taken over the years, although some of the photos I'm going through now are probably ones that weren't good enough for the albums. And the photo that started it all [one that I needed to find as I wanted to copy it] is the only one that has a mark on it, so I need to find the negative [that could take months].

This was going to be my winter project so I'd better get a move on I have boxes and boxes of photos to go through.

Trouble is I'm now wanting to re decorate my whole house as well after watching that bloomin' programme....at least I was able to show my grandson one of the photos of our long departed Burmese cat curled up in the basket with the dogs. He said 'Granny, I thought cats and dogs didn't like each other' so at least I was able to put him right over that. And I was able to find the photo of my son walking down a country lane with his inflatable dinosaur, Bruno [who lives in the loft].

Tegan, do you have a shop called The Works where you are? They tend to have a good selection of photo albums.

I've bought some from W H Smiths; they're selling them half price but there's a sign next to them saying 'when these are gone we're not restocking'. I realised there was a problem when Tescos said they didn't sell them any more; mind you, I may need to go back and get some more. I've even got loads on disc as well, but my son switched the computers and they're on another one. I now take photos with the digital camera but haven't got a clue what to do with it [and I've just remembered the drawer with the photos of the grandchildren]. I'm swimming in a sea of memories at the moment...

Tegan - The first thing I intended to do when I retired (5 years ago) was sort out our photos. I have some in albums but most are shoved into a large plastic container, in no order whatsoever. I was going to set about sorting them out, doing a few each day. I couldn't do it! There are literally thousands of them. I started putting them into sections - holidays, family etc but it was too much for me, I got so muddled and stressed I gave up.
Occasionally it crosses my mind to get on with it and I really must but I can't face it. I admire your resilience

I've been given 2 albums of photos taken on my son's digital camera, the photos are of my darling granddaughters. There is a company/companies that will print albums for you when you e-mail them the photos required. Both sets of Grandparents [and that includes my ex and his wife] have had them for birthdays and Christmas. I have several old fashioned photo albums all half full, I hated the onerous task of putting photos in albums. Much prefer this new method.

Adding onto this question of photo albums going out of style. Letters whether love or between friends and families will disappear. I have letters written by my father to my mother when he was posted abroad. Letters written by Grandmother to me. Also all the letters between me and my mother in law written during the seven years I lived in New York. Several friends in GB also wrote to me during that time and my New York friends once I came back. E-mails aren't kept for a long time.
The family letters are especially important to me as all of them have died.

I haven't put the photos in date order; that's what was stopping me from doing it, but I've done one album with mainly my son, another my daughter, then there's a family holidays one [oh, and a family pets one]. Negatives are all in a box and another box is for the remainder. I stayed up half the night doing it then woke at 7 and carried on. I'm finding it quite therapeutic [but you should see my living room ]. When I've done the photos I have boxes and boxes of Racing Posts going back years, with articles about favourite horses; just when I think I'll stop saving them Frankels first foals are being born so I HAVE to add those to the collection.

My six year-old granddaughter wants to know why there are not many photos of her in boxes or albums. It's because they are all on computers or SD cards. So I have promised her that this year we will go through the photos on grandad's computer and print some off for her.
One thing I have done for years is get the grandchildren to look at photos and find the ones they want for calendars. I usually have two, one in the kitchen and one in the living room. At the end of the year, I store the calendar for a record.

We have photos of my husband's family going back to the late 19th century, stacks of them! We are in the process of putting them all in photo albums before we even start on our own. We find that our children aren't too bothered about their forebears but the next generation are. My DGS who is 25, was quite overcome recently when he tried on his great, great grandfather's opera hat!

I have a very small photo album of pictures taken of my English granny's mother's family back in the 19th century. The problem is that, as I didn't acquire this album until the last of my Mum's family had died, I have no means of identification. Many of them I can guess at from family resemblances, but others are a complete mystery. Fortunately we do have an identified portrait of my great grandmother - a handsome woman with a white lacy cap. Sadly she died after giving birth to my great aunt.

I felt that, although I never knew my grandparents, they were part of my life because their photos were always in our house, so I grew up with an awareness of what they looked like. My daughter does the same with her husbands parents, both of them died years before her children were born but they 'see' them every day. I know this is narcissistic of me, but I want to put some photos of me together so the boys will realise one day that I wasn't always old and grey haired.

For my 70th birthday, my sister got all the photos she had of me, and printed them out and put them in an A4 file. Lovely idea.
I have realised though that I can add to these, i have some she didn't know about.

anno you might have some ideas of who they are if you manage to date these photos. - I have one of my ggrandfather and when it was dated (by RootsChat) I knew how it also got to my NZ relatives,

As a Christmas present to my DD one year I made up a photo album and put her name and 'This Is Your Life (so far)'. I then started with baby pictures, and came right up to the present, pictures of her as a child, a teenager, and so on, milestones, her engagement, wedding and then pictures of her own DD. She was thrilled.

oh I love photo albums and I think we must keep them alive...yes it is great to have them on disc/pen drives/hard drives as back up etc...but there is nothing more enjoyable than sitting down with family and going through photo albums.."oh do you remember when we went to such n such a place"! ohh uncle Jims party.lol..etc etc photos tell a whole life story and there is something about getting out the photos...you don't need to have them all in albums..ours are all in a cardboard box impossible to sort out in to categories and my DDs who are now 38 and 31 still love to look through them, my elder DD tells me off for throwing any out or cutting them to fit in frames,I say bring back photos albums I am going to start one for GS of all the places we have been to.
Wilkinsons also sell photo albums, I find the ones with a sort of film that you peel back are better as you can then put any size of photo in rather than just 6 x 4. they can of course make you a little sad when you look at photos especially when some are no longer with us..also it does pain me to look at some when DH was a lot fitter before he became ill, but I suppose these are memories.

The peel back ones that I used to use turned all the photos yellow [I assume they've improved them now]. I was on my way to Wilko's when I found the albums on sale at Smiths; I'll go there next week for a look. It's when my albums started to remind me of the albums passed on from our parents that I started to find them a bit sad. At least now, with digital cameras people only keep the good photos; my problem is not being able to throw awaythe rubbish ones, because I still feel that I am destroying a 'moment in time' [I've managed to throw out about 10 photos, but they've been of people outside of my family].

I've scanned and computerised all my photos and slides and saved them online. I look at them all the time - much more often than the real albums. I keep quite a lot on my ipad and find I show them off more easily too. The real albums are now archived in the loft for my grandsons to discover in years to come. I've thrown out some of the modern ones which have deteriorated but the very old black and white are still in great condition so I couldn't bring myself to dispose of them.

I have the same problem, with boxes of old photos we don't often look at. Just been sorting some to put in albums. My brother has a gadget on his ordinary TV screen - an apple tv - which somehow links to all the photos on his computer - these are the recent digital photos and also very old photos he'd previously scanned in.

He puts the TV on, he plays some music, and all the photos randomly appear across the screen whilst you're listening to music. It was a great talking point, and apparently wasn't very expensive. It does loads of other things too, but I have no idea what! It means you suddenly see a photo you've forgotton about, brings back memories.

I suppose when you've got them all stored on computer - with back up, in theory, you could chuck the old photos. I coudn't bring myself to do that though.

toddwebb.wordpress.com/2008/04/17/making-memories-with-our-apple-tv/