Old photos are fragile in more ways than one. The paper fades, the colours shift and the people who knew who was in them grow fewer every year. Getting them scanned and labelled is a job worth doing now.
The clip below is what we put on while sorting. It runs long enough to get through a month of photos.
Start with what you already have
Do not aim for perfection. A good-enough scan with the right caption beats a perfect scan of a stranger.
Start with the photos that only one person can still name. Everything else can wait.
- Keep one photo per day at most
- Hand the camera to someone else
- Pick a fixed day each month
What we got wrong
Some readers keep a short list of rules on a sticky note beside the computer. Ours says: faces first, then places, then anything that made us laugh. It is not scientific, but it stops the session turning into an evening of second-guessing.
Keep the phone charged and the lens clean on days you expect to matter. It sounds small, but a flat battery or a smudged lens has cost more good pictures than any missing piece of equipment.
Picking is a skill. Like any skill, it gets faster.
Priya Nair, Paperleaf print room
When to stop
On the second pass, look for variety. A month of the same room and the same faces feels flat, even if each photo is lovely on its own.
If you share a camera roll with someone, agree on who picks which month. Taking turns means each book has a slightly different point of view, and nobody ends up doing all of the work every time.
Good to know: every Paperleaf book has room for thirty photos, so there is no prize for keeping more.
Keep it simple
If two photos are nearly the same, keep the one where someone is doing something. A raised hand, a turned head or a half-finished sentence gives a picture life that a perfectly still pose rarely has, even when the still one is technically better.
Be generous on the first pass. You are not deciding what goes in the book yet, only what is definitely out.
- Include at least one place, not just faces
- Keep one photo per day at most
- Leave the cover for last
Try it this month
Watch the light at different times of day in your own home. Most houses have one window that is lovely for an hour every afternoon.
Ask someone else to look at your shortlist. They will spot the photo you were about to drop and the one you only kept out of habit.
The book comes, and for one evening nobody looks at their phone.
Marcus, father of three
A few small rules
Set aside a fixed time for it. The last Sunday of the month works for a lot of readers because the week is quiet and the month is complete.
Saving this for the end of the month. Last Sunday it is.
That is lovely to hear. Say hello to your grandmother from all of us.
The bit about writing names on the back hit home. We have a box of strangers in our loft.
This is exactly the nudge I needed. My camera roll has four thousand photos from this year alone.
Such a simple idea and I had never tried it. Doing it tonight.
Great question. Start with one photo per child per day and swap them on the second pass.
Thank you for not telling me to buy a new camera.
We tried the one-photo-per-day rule last month and it made picking so much easier. Thank you!
Such a simple idea and I had never tried it. Doing it tonight.