Slides into their DMs
May 15, 2024 11:45 AM Subscribe
I picked up around 30-40 circular slide trays from my in-laws, photos my father-in-law took over the past 60 years. My goal is to digitize them, but I'm not sure how to make these digital copies useful.
I have my digitization workflow down, I don't need suggestions there.
What I need is a "delivery" method, so the other inlaws can view them and use them, that they're accessible rather than just an archive.
Back in the olden days, a video slideshow burned to a CD or DVD seems like how you shared collections of family photos, but I'm not sure that's still a preferred method.
I want the photos to be somewhat useful, rather than handing everyone a USB drive full of complicated folders that nobody will ever look at.
Does anybody have suggestions for a 2020s-style sharing of a large amount of family photos? Thanks!
I have my digitization workflow down, I don't need suggestions there.
What I need is a "delivery" method, so the other inlaws can view them and use them, that they're accessible rather than just an archive.
Back in the olden days, a video slideshow burned to a CD or DVD seems like how you shared collections of family photos, but I'm not sure that's still a preferred method.
I want the photos to be somewhat useful, rather than handing everyone a USB drive full of complicated folders that nobody will ever look at.
Does anybody have suggestions for a 2020s-style sharing of a large amount of family photos? Thanks!
The oft-recommended Aura digital frames are a great way to gift family members of diverse tech abilities large sets of digital photos.
posted by niicholas at 11:56 AM on May 15 [4 favorites]
posted by niicholas at 11:56 AM on May 15 [4 favorites]
I don't think there is a one-size-fits-all solution. Drip them out on social media so family members can tag and comment on photos. Amazon Photos can cycle photos on Echo Show. Apple photo streams for iOS users and privacy, Google for web-sharability -- both have OCR and face recognition.
Or if you're like my dad you email a random picture from the archive every day to a random subset of your contact list. People are used to getting their nostalgia in bite-size portions these days (and did anyone ever love sitting down with grandpa's slide projector for an hour?)
posted by credulous at 12:16 PM on May 15
Or if you're like my dad you email a random picture from the archive every day to a random subset of your contact list. People are used to getting their nostalgia in bite-size portions these days (and did anyone ever love sitting down with grandpa's slide projector for an hour?)
posted by credulous at 12:16 PM on May 15
If I was in your family, I'd prefer if you'd mail me a USB stick with copes of everything. That would be super important to me for preservation reasons. It would also be really cool if you did another thing for ease of access, such as have a google photos album or put a favorite photo on social media periodically or whatever. In 10 years the google photo album will be gone, but I'd still have the USB stick in my desk drawer (and I would have copied the data to my system so it gets onto my routine backups).
The two goals of preservation and access are really entirely separate.
posted by fritley at 12:32 PM on May 15 [11 favorites]
The two goals of preservation and access are really entirely separate.
posted by fritley at 12:32 PM on May 15 [11 favorites]
We have a digital photo frame (old, I think non-Aura). We gave an Aura frame to Grandma; she loved it. My MIL was jealous, so we got her one, too.
Each month I have a process to go through all the places we gather photos (my phone, Mr. Meat's phone, siblings' Google share drives, etc) and backup everything. Then I select the photos that I think Grandma and MIL would enjoy and put them on theirs. It is a very easy process, and family members can also upload. It's also a reminder to call Grandma and say hi and see what she's up to.
posted by Ms Vegetable at 12:50 PM on May 15 [1 favorite]
Each month I have a process to go through all the places we gather photos (my phone, Mr. Meat's phone, siblings' Google share drives, etc) and backup everything. Then I select the photos that I think Grandma and MIL would enjoy and put them on theirs. It is a very easy process, and family members can also upload. It's also a reminder to call Grandma and say hi and see what she's up to.
posted by Ms Vegetable at 12:50 PM on May 15 [1 favorite]
Oh, and I personally really enjoy the digital photo frame in our living room, much more than I enjoyed photo albums. Going through albums felt like a chore. Seeing a random photo pop up on our frame means I see my photos, I enjoy them, they're not gathering dust on a bookshelf. (But YMMV: my mom hates this idea.)
posted by Ms Vegetable at 12:51 PM on May 15 [3 favorites]
posted by Ms Vegetable at 12:51 PM on May 15 [3 favorites]
Our multi-generational family of Boomers, GenX, Millennials, and Gen Z have all liked physical albums. Often we create a digital album (google photos or similar) with all the photos, but then edit the best ones into a book.
posted by cocoagirl at 2:29 PM on May 15
posted by cocoagirl at 2:29 PM on May 15
I've been taking my parent's slides, scanning them, and having them printed up in books (via Blurb). One book per time period or defined event.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:29 PM on May 15
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:29 PM on May 15
Do you have the identification of contents worked out? Our problem is not digitization, either, but the fact that we inherited the slides from older folk who are now deceased, and we no longer have their help to identify who is in the image or what the image is about
posted by TimHare at 9:38 PM on May 15
posted by TimHare at 9:38 PM on May 15
Maybe get a domain/hosting and put them in self hosted gallery. Give your family logins so they can download, make albums and add metadata.
Some options are Zenphoto, Piwigo, or a Wordpress Plugin.
posted by Sophont at 12:22 AM on May 16
Some options are Zenphoto, Piwigo, or a Wordpress Plugin.
posted by Sophont at 12:22 AM on May 16
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posted by cmm at 11:52 AM on May 15 [1 favorite]