Three Reasons Why You Need to Bring Your Family Photos to RootsTech 2015

Family Portrait Early 1950s

Roots and Tech, two words that are so completely different in nature tell so much about what is going to happen in Salt Lake City next month. Thousands of people who have a passion for their family ancestry will come together for three days to learn the latest in technological innovations that will help them tell their family’s story.

Last year, RootsTech reports that nearly 4,000 youth ages 12-18 attended their conference classes and activities. I love that statistic because I believe that, in addition to documenting our family ancestry, we need to teach our youth about where they have come from, what values mattered to their family and how hard work builds character.

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When completing a family history, we have found that photos are integral to telling a family’s story. Photos add impact to family lineages by visually connecting generations. There is a reason children, teenagers and even adults enjoy looking at photos of their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents from “back in the day.”

Our friends at E-Z Photo Scan have been passionate about helping people digitize photos for over twenty years. They along with Kodak Alaris and FamilySearch are bringing over a dozen Scannx Photo ScanCenters to the RootsTech 2015 Conference. All attendees are invited to bring their photos to RootsTech for scanning at no charge.

Their goal is to scan 100,000 photos and treasured documents during the conference and you need to be a part of it!

Here’s three reasons why you should bring your photos with you to RootsTech 2015:

  1. This kind of scanning is easy and super fast! At a speed of up to 85 photos per minute, the scanners make quick work of digitizing your photos. (And did we mention free? Scanning photos can cost anywhere from 17 to 99 cents a photo depending upon where you go.)
  1. It’s such a relief to get it done! Many people delay scanning photos because it seems so overwhelming to start and, thereby, risk losing those photos to time, damage and other types of loss. Just get it done!
  1. Your photos have the power to strengthen your family’s story, traditions and values. We are a visual society and photos tell stories – bringing people and personality to life. We can see in our family photos how our ancestors lived, what values mattered and what life was like long before technological advances became an everyday happening. And. . . you will delight other family members when you can share the images with them as well.

Grandparents working hard

We are thrilled to hear about our colleagues’ goal to preserve 100,000 photos through the Scannnx Photo ScanCenters at RootsTech 2015. And, we are “rooting” for attendees to step up to the challenge of making their photos a priority, bringing them along for the ride to Salt Lake City and heading to Booth #1343 where family history will be saved!

For more information:

RootsTech 100,000 Photos Scanned Goal by E-Z Photo Scan

RootsTech 2015

At Pixologie, we help people get their photos out of chaos and back into life to be celebrated and shared. To learn more, visit us at www.pixologieinc.com

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