What to do with hundreds of photographs?

[Kayemm]

I've got mine, my mum's and my great aunt's photos that need combining, pruning and ordering.

They are taking up far too much room and hundreds is probably a really conservative estimate.

There's about 60 albums, dozens of large envelopes and 2 shoeboxes full of photos, they go back over 100 years. My first thought is to try and get them in some sort of order, take out the duplicates, refine them, identify whoever I can and then produce photo books, starting with pre 1920's and moving forwards, initially with decades and then with a book per year. I was going to ask my adult children if they wanted any copies too. I have no other relatives.

Do you have any better ideas?

And what do I do with all the very old photos where I have no idea who is in them or where they are? I'm talking pre WWII. It seems an awful shame just to bin them.

All thoughts and ideas really appreciated.

It sounds like a very worthwhile project, but I fear that perhaps even your children will have limited interest in the finished product. Really to make it useful in the future I think you need to streamline, eliminate duplicates, scan and upload to somewhere publically searchable, and tag the people whose names you know. That way there’s a chance that the pictures will be recorded and used in the future.

I went through all my own albums (several shelves full) and threw out all photographs of scenery, I organised the remaining photos of family , mostly on special occasions, and put them in albums in chronological order and labelled all the photos. I have passed the albums on to DC and his children.

I'm starting that project now too. I don't think I'll produce photo books but just digitize the photos. My problem is is how to digitize - I've tried taking pictures of the photos with my phone but they haven't turned out great, but the other option is a high speed photo scanner but that'll be a few hundred ££. The more time consuming piece will be the photo metadata - people names, dates, and locations. DH suggests just grouping photos with general labels - Maui 1984 trip - instead of doing each photo individually but I think I'll regret not going into those details in the future.

Oh this is tough and I've got the same issue I've been sitting on for 20 years. My inherited albums go back to 1880s and early photography. Ladies in crinolines FFS. I have no clue who they are.

I got a bit addicted to identifying relatives in old photos. You can often work a lot out by building a simple family tree and comparing dates of weddings, ages, location to the photos. There are also websites to help you look for clues in the photos (dress, photographer etc.) Please don't throw them out!