It’s Time to Save Your Photos This Saturday!

Check Out Your Local Partners in Preserving Your Memories!

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On Saturday, September 26, 2015, we are thrilled to be hosting our second annual Save Your Photos Day event with Rely Local. Come to our Open House . . . 

  • Hear about the importance of saving your memories for future generations
  • Visit different stations to see how Pixologie saves old photos and media
  • Learn more about how to organize and save your photos
  • Check out Rely Local who will be there also with a very fun guest!
  • Get 50 FREE photos scanned – bring in your photos (8×10 or smaller, flat and no copyrighted portraits) for free scanning.

RSVP on Facebook, by calling 414-731-1881 or email us at contact@pixologieinc.com

Working with a local photo organizer provides much reassurance to families who want to digitize their pictures so they can share the memories with other members in their families. We handle your treasured photos and materials with care and expertise, most of the work is completed right in our studio, so you know your memories are safe. With a  local option  available, there is no reason to be overwhelmed by a photos mess!

Research suggests that the sheer volume and lack of organization of digital photos for personal memories discourages many people from accessing and reminiscing about them. (Linda Henkel, Psychological Scientist)

Rely Local is helping us to spread the word – they know that supporting local businesses helps stimulate our area’s economy especially in their focus area of city of Oak Creek and counties of Racine and Kenosha, Wisconsin – and creates a stable and vibrant community. We are grateful for their help in promoting our event.

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Not in Southeastern Wisconsin? There may be a Save Your Photos Day event near you. Click here to learn more about the Save Your Photos Alliance and other locations of SYPD events.

Want to know about our other Pixologie Locations? Click here.

Check out our website!

Follow us on Facebook

Learn about the Photo Organizing Field!

Visit Rely Local!

Four Things You Should Do With Your Antique Photos

What’s the oldest photo or album you have?

Antique Photo Album

One of our clients gave us a truly historic antique book filled with heritage portraits to scan. He knew that all of the photos were of his mother’s family . . . and he knew the names of a couple of the people in the book.

Just look at how beautiful and fragile this album is.  We gingerly opened it and used our Flip Pal scanner to gently scan the photos. The album was made to slide the portraits into slots and we couldn’t remove them due to the risk of tearing the pages.

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Here’s four things you should do with your antique photos as soon as you can!

  1. Gather all of them into one place for safe storage
  2. Sit down with your family’s historian or oldest living relative and start identifying who is in the old photos. Use a post it on the back of the photo temporarily. Enjoy the reminiscing.
  3. Scan your photos with a flatbed scanner, and the backs of the photos if there is identifying names and dates.
  4. Tag the photos digitally with the name of the relative or use other photo organizing software to document the story behind the portrait.

Save the photos, portraits and save the stories!

My mom had a photo of her Uncle Barnny – and he was quite the character. I still have the photos and the stories of how he set their house on fire with his moonshine operation in the basement. Maybe I’ll write about that in another blog!

Let us know if you need any help with preserving the old family portraits, albums and photos – we’d be glad to teach you how, do it with you or do it for you!

www.pixologieinc.com

414-731-1881

Who Knew We Could Scan 60,000 Photos in 10 Days!

Graphic for Blog To celebrate International Save Your Photos Day 2014, Pixologie committed to an audacious goal of scanning 100,000 photos in the run-up to Saturday, September 27. Here’s what we actually achieved:

  • 61,000 photos scanned with our Kodak Picture Saver high speed scanners and preserved for over twenty individuals and families
  • Another 50,000 approximately on our docket to be scanned throughout October for an additional six families

Lessons Learned

With our Save Your Photos Day goal and event, our clients felt a call to action. Most of our clients want to get their photos organized, but many needed that extra motivation to start. With the extra attention to saving photos, people understood that flooding, tornados, hard drive crashes, etc. are a real threat to their family memories. The devastation of losing photos in a disaster or to time was more apparent because of this special day.

However, we found that our clients had been waiting for the day to be organized before bringing their photos in for scanning services. Our goal was impacted by the fact that we had to physically remove most of the photos from the albums brought in. We did not just want numbers, we wanted our clients to have a usable digital archive of their photos.

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Here’s a story of a great couple whom we’ve known for over three years and who have not been ready to get their photos out of a chaotic situation in their closet.

Over 50 Years of Memories Too Overwhelming to Even Look At

Stephen and Mary had fifty-five diverse photo albums, all different sizes, types and levels of deterioration along with hundreds of photo envelopes – overloading the shelves in their bedroom closet and never brought out to be shared.  Even though most of the photos were in albums, the memories spanned over 50 years of marriage and were so overwhelming that the escapades of their eight children growing up, celebrations, travel around the world, and their annual mission work were hidden away. We picked up their photo album collection, took out all the photos from the albums and scanned the pictures.

After the scanning process, we tagged their digital files with relevant keywords so they could search their photos for events and important topics. We will return their photos in elegant Legacy Boxes along with DVDs of their photos.

Our next steps are to help them create digital photo books by picking out the best of their photos on topics such as their mission work with an orphanage in Honduras which spans many years and their family “yearbook” featuring and celebrating their traditions and faith.

Because of Save Your Photos Day and the relationship we had developed with them over the years, Stephen and Mary have taken their photos out of their closet and are bringing their memories and stories back into life to be celebrated and shared.

Consider Scanning a First Step to Getting Your Photos Organized

As mentioned before, we found that many of our SYPD clients were waiting until they organized their photos to bring them in for scanning. Unfortunately, that day doesn’t usually come when you have time to organize your photos, and instead, you are rushing around creating further photo chaos trying to find needed pictures for a special event.

Some Ways We Can Help

  1. Bring your albums and boxes of photos to Pixologie for Open Studio Time. We’ll get you started on preparing your photos for scanning.
  2. Have a lot of photos to scan? Consider renting our Kodak PS50 to scan your photos at home. It comes with a laptop, so scanning is super easy and super fast at up to 50 photos per minute.
  3. Still too overwhelmed? Give us a call. We’d be happy to talk with you and help you make a plan to get your photos out of chaos and back into life to be celebrated and shared!

In the end, we were humbled that our clients embraced our goal for Save Your Photos Day and feel so blessed to be a part of making sure their stories were recovered, shared and preserved!

Please feel free to contact us with any questions!

Email: mollieandann@pixologieinc.com

Telephone: 414-690-0791

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About the Save Your Photos Alliance  Pixologie is a member of the Save Your Photos Alliance, a group committed to being the world’s premier organization for the SAFEGUARDING, RECOVERING, RESTORING, and REUNITING of photos and treasured memorabilia before and after disasters occur.

Learn more about the Alliance at: www.saveyourphotos.org

Learn more about the National Disaster Photo Rescue organization: http://nationaldisasterphotorescue.org/