I Can't Believe I Lost Them

For quite some time now I have been telling people about the importance of having their photos scanned.I've written about about, spoke in person about it and tried to get the message across that people could end up very sorry if they don't take the bull by the horns and scan their photos.

Since I opened The Scan Zone, I have heard terrible stories of people who lost their photos in a fire or a flood. Every photo scanning company has experience with a client or prospect who tells a story about losing photos to something--unfortunately, it's after the photos are lost.
Unfortunately, I can now count myself among those who have lost critical photos. I have been trying to make time when I could to scan my own family photos. I have the equipment and there is often down time so there was really no excuse not to finish the job. I estimate that there were about 25,000 pictures in my basement and I have been scanning them. From the time I began the project, it has been going well. Many of the photos were losing the battle to age and I have had to work with them to bring them back to life. But through it all, I was so fortunate that I didnt totally lose photos to something unforsee.

Well, that all changed today.

This morning I was looking through all the boxes in order to find some photos to bring to my brother's house. I wanted to bring him some photos that had to do with our Mom, who has been gone for nearly 10 years now. I opened a Rubbermaid storage bin and I immediately knew something wasnt right. I could smell mold. Strong. And when I started reaching in for some of the key pictures I knew were in there, many of the photos were fused together, like they were glued. They couldnt be separated and some practically came apart in my hands. They were destroyed. About 25 of those large protraits in cardbord holders were lost. Yeah, there was my college graduation and some other portraits I and my brother sat for. Then there were some pictures from my wedding. Gone too.

That wasnt even the worst. There were dozens of cardboard holders with photos of my parents, their friends and some of their relatives too. I remembered the pictures...they're were people at dinner at the lake, or they were having a fun night out on the town. Or they were all caught at a big table at a resort and I always love to see my old relatives looking so young and free..But I opened them and the mold must have destroyed them.

I was crushed. I held them in my hand and saw there was no way I knew to rescue them. Gone too were my grandparents at some sort of lodge event. Worse than that, I lost the family portrait set of my grandmother's family when she was only two yearsold--before arriving in the United States at the start of the last century!

WhenI put that Rubbemaid filled with picutres off to the side of the closet, I didnt consider the possibility that water damage from a small leak would ruin those wonderful photos. I took the all the folders and tried to see what I could do. Even the old reliable of a hair dryer wouldnt split them apart and I could not recapture those signature, historical family portraits.

So I'm left with a number of different kinds of feelings. I'm angry that these pictures were ruined on my watcgh. Im terribly saddened that these photos are gone and I can't get them back. I'm a little sheepish for falling into the exact trap thart Ive been telling people for all this time to avoid.
So, I'll say it once again, this time from deep within personal experience--please don't let your important photos be detroyed or fade away. Digitize them and save them to DVD so they can last 50 years or more. You wont regret it.