Since I began exploring my family photos I have been asked many questions about how to organize , sort, and digitize family photos.  The questions are often by others in my age group who recently inherited their family photos, but it’s also by my friends parents who want to organize the photos so they can be easily distributed been children and grandchildren.

As I wrote in an early post, digital photos are easy to work with, but it takes time to sort and scan the images.  You can pay to have the images scanned.  This is usually easiet if you’re just working with 35mm slides. If you’re working with a range of media, as I do, you may have to do most of it yourself.

I named this group Exploring Family Photos because it is like an archaelogical inquiry. In many photos you have to name the people, places, and dates. This is how the family history fits in. To many this may be daunting, but I was surprised at how easy it became once I got started.

In dating pictures you can often give a specific year by noting that because of a car or piece of furniture it couldn’t be before or after a certain date.

For identifying people if you know the basic cast of characters you have those choices to work from. You gain more insite by asking questions.  Contact other family members for their input. You’re not discovering unchartered territory – you’re working with material that some family members may know more than you. With email it is easy to send the picture and gather information.

Writing a family history

Using the photos is a great way to get family members talking about what they know about deceased family or about an event. Share the photos to trawl for information. The stories may be totally unrelated to the picture, but these stories could be more valuable.

An example of this is looking at a picture of my cousins playing football in my grandparent’s from yard on Thanksgiving.  This photo is of marginal quality, but it reminds me of a few things:

1. the traditional menu for Thanksgiving which always included noodle kugel with raisins. I never liked raisins and would pick them out.  My grandmother then switched to using golden raisins whcih I would eat.  Unfortunately, as she aged the quality of the kugel diminished and was burnt the final years she still prepared the dinner.
2. All of us cousins loved mandel brot – hard almond cookies that are pretty much the same as almond biscotti.  We were always certain that she made them especially for my cousins Ron and Dave. A few years ago I asked Dav about that and he said that he never got extras, she must have done that for Ron.
3. After my grandfather died I asked my grandmother to teach me how to make potato knishes. I brought my friend Janis along when I had the lesson.  We had a great time.  My grandmother even filmed it, but as she filmed she moved the camera, rather than allowing the subjects move and the camera stay still. At the end of the day we had dozens of knishes that we divided between the three of us. But as I pulled out of her one way driveway I spotted her sisters pulling in.  She told them that Janis stole all of the knishes.