A Picture Is Worth...

... more than everything in the house. Seriously. We are packing up and getting rid of lots of things in my grandparents' house this weekend, as well as probably saving too much. Once we got to the pictures, it was a slow moving, but extremely joyful process. I learned so much about my grandparents/great-grandparents and made connections to stories I had heard growing up by having pictures to look at.

Grandma Shirley, age 24.

Apologies again for the phone camera, not to mention awful glare from taking a picture of a picture. But, isn't my Great Grandpa Syd a stud?! I adore this picture. (He's my Grandma Shirley's dad.)

Probably all time favorite picture, again, my Great-Grandpa Syd. Fish in one hand, pole in the other, cigarette in mouth, plaid jacket, standing next to an old car. This looks straight out of a magazine. (Again, sorry for the glare!)

Soon, [fingers crossed] I will be able to post beautiful digital images of the pictures above (and more) because we have started sending groups of photos to ScanDigital. Were it not for Groupon, I would not have heard of them. You can send in anything - slide, hard copies of photos, scrapbook pages, nearly any way a picture has been preserved since the beginning of photography - and they will clean the photo, scan it using the best technology and then all images are cropped, color corrected, and minor blemish/dust removed if needed. Your final product is a CD/DVD of every image as well as an online gallery of all your photos to share with family and friends. I may sound like a salesperson, but I'm just so excited and relieved to have digital images of all these priceless memories.

If you're interested in doing this, definitely check out their website and/or sign up for Groupon because they offer $100 worth of digital preservation Groupon for only $40. (Each hard copy photograph costs $0.38 for a 300dpi digital copy. This means each $100 Groupon will get you 268 digital images. Other formats of photos cost more.)