Hello everyone. I will just wait a second or two to see who will be joining us live today. It is a dreary day here in Wisconsin, but it's a good day to talk about saving family memories. So let me just set the stage for you. And it's not a positive stage today that we're going to talk about, although it will end that way.
I want you to imagine that your house is on fire. Of course, you are making sure everybody gets out. The children, the pets. Everyone's out safely. But as the fire is developing, the next thing that people most often are thinking about—and you might be as well—is the family photos, the albums, the boxes of pictures, the videotapes which are spread throughout the house.
When you have a house fire and there is so much going on in your head, safety is first. And then, of course, you're thinking of the memories. And you have to wonder, do I even have time to go back in? Well, it is Save Your Photos Month and I have some thoughts about photos and fires, and I'm hoping you'll join with me today.
It is Live with Molly, September 23rd, and I welcome everybody who is here to say hi in the chat if they like. And definitely this is your opportunity to ask questions about saving family memories because they are fragile in a way. Time and technology and disaster are waiting to steal them away. So go ahead and throw a question or a thought in there and I'll share them later if it makes sense and I can answer something for you.
I want to start off the program today with me remembering back in 2016. I was in Los Angeles for this crazy conference. It was called Craig Duswalt’s Rockstar Marketing Boot Camp, and we were just a couple years old—Pixology was. We were interested in having a booth there because we thought everybody would be interested in saving their photos. And most people are interested. They just don't know how. They don't have the time and whatnot.
So anyway, we are in LA at this Craig Duswalt conference. Craig Duswalt, by the way, is the former manager for Guns N’ Roses. And he knew Axl Rose really well. So it was really a rock star marketing boot camp in LA.
At the booth, we did have people come up to talk to us about saving photos. And one woman came up and she said that three weeks ago—this was 2016—her house was in a community that was experiencing what was called the Blue Cut wildfire. This was in San Bernardino County. It was just devastating. People died. Houses were lost.
This woman told me, “I was not even given 30 seconds. We had to leave the house immediately because the wildfires were imminent.” And I think that even if you were to have a house fire, how much time do you really have to collect your pictures?
This is why we need to really talk about fires and photos. Of course, the best thing you can do is to prevent having this loss happen, and that's by taking care of your pictures before disaster hits. Unfortunately, that's not how life always happens. And I wanted to explain the different things that happen to people's photos when they're in a fire.
Of course, photos can be burnt—burnt to ashes. I did find an article about another fire in LA. It's called the Lilac Fire. The headline talked about people returning home to sift through memories and ashes. You could see a photo album that the Los Angeles Times pictured back in 2017. There are some photos that are definitely ashes. There are photos that are covered in soot and dirty. There might even be some water damage as well.
Water damage is a really big problem. After you think about the fire being put out, it's the water that is doing that, and your photos will be soaked. Some pictures, especially those that were chemically produced prior to the 80s and 90s, the ink can be just washed away.
Even photo albums—because of the plastic laying over pictures—some of the photo can adhere to the plastic. We have seen albums where the faces of the pictures, the top layer of the pictures, are peeling up on the plastic. This wasn’t fire damaged—it was water damaged. Some of these issues people would experience even in flooding situations.
Sometimes the fire is so hot it can melt things together. One thing people often do is store pictures in plastic baggies. That plastic can warp and melt into a solid piece. The pictures inside can become a block because of water getting in there as well. So you have melded pictures together, potentially plastic stuck to the pictures, and so much more.
It’s really amazing how fast damage can happen to photos.
The other thing that happens when photos are in a fire or flooding situation is that if they're not separated and laid out properly, and then stored in an area where there's moisture, humidity, or heat, mold can develop. That is a concern too, because when you start trying to separate the pictures and clean them, you could be making yourself sick because of the mold. We've seen white mold as well as black mold on pictures here at Pixology.
Imagine your most treasured photos, the frames on the walls, holding photos that are ruined and you don't have another way to save them.
This actually happened to one of our clients around 2018. Not only did her house burn down—it was a horrible story for the family—but the recovery company that came in made things worse.
When there is a house fire, you usually have a recovery company come in and try to figure out what can be saved and what is destroyed. They work with the insurance adjuster so that you can start replacing the things that you've lost.
In this situation, as they were going through the house, they had a laundry basket and just put all of the albums, loose photos, and memorabilia into that basket. Everything was soaked because of the fire response putting the fire out.
It was July, and for some reason the recovery company put it in an outdoor locker and stored it there for three weeks before calling us.
We had a lot of mold. We had a lot of destroyed pictures. It was actually really difficult to find good ones. We couldn’t even do the work at our offices in Oak Creek. We took them to our garage and used gloves and masks because the mold and mildew smell was overwhelming.
We painstakingly removed pictures from the albums. It took probably about 14 hours. We hung them on lines in our garage—about 900 photos hanging for a couple of days. That’s how we dried the pictures we could save.
Some people use paper towels or newspaper laid down on a table. You can dry pictures that way as well.
In this case, we weren’t able to save a whole lot, but we saved enough to tell the story of their lives—from portraits to graduations.
For pictures stuck in a block, we put them in distilled water. Especially modern pictures can get wet and be separated. In this situation, we let them soak overnight, then gently peeled a couple apart and waited for the next layer to loosen.
You can see how important it is to get your photos spread out and dried. Friends and family who want to help can do this while you’re dealing with the other impacts of the fire.
There are ways to save pictures. You don’t want to just throw them away and give up.
In the end, for our client, we had about ten envelopes of photos after they were dried out. Of the 900 pictures, probably around 400 were good. Another 300 needed restoration or cropping and could probably have been saved. Some were just not usable.
These batches were scanned and then saved in three places. We try to save photos digitally on a computer, backed up to a hard drive, and uploaded to a cloud service.
When asked which storage service we recommend, it is Forever.com. I highly recommend also keeping a copy on your computer and an external hard drive. Like any cloud service, if you don’t have internet access, you don’t have access to your pictures.
When you can save photos after a tragedy like this, it is good. But the better situation is to be ahead of the game and save your pictures before disaster hits.
I have a video on YouTube called “Photo Organizing Should Be Easy.” It’s a six-minute overview of what needs to be done.
There are three simple things you have to do with pictures and videos and memorabilia:
First, organize.
Second, digitize.
Third, preserve.
Organize it in a nutshell. Digitize it—scanning and transferring videos. Then preserve it. Preserving includes storing digital copies properly and creating photo books with stories.
The steps are simple. Carrying them out is time consuming and sometimes emotionally draining. But it’s far less draining than dealing with the loss of pictures from fire, technology failure, or disaster.
One viewer mentioned that old photo albums are bulky and she'd like to create digital versions. If you have heavy scrapbooks—10-pound books—and you have to run out in an emergency, how could you possibly grab all of them?
When you scan scrapbooks, even very old ones from the 30s and 40s, you can recreate smaller versions. Saving photos digitally can also reduce clutter in your house.
Another viewer said they’ve tried for years to get organized but feel stuck. She hopes to complete the project before she dies. That’s something I hear often.
We don’t know how much time we have. What do your photos say about your life?
My goal in doing these live programs every week is to help motivate people to keep going. You’ll feel relieved when it’s done. It matters—especially if it matters to you.
One of the best ways to work on photos is to schedule dedicated time. Put it on the calendar. Work with a group. That accountability helps.
It is Save Your Photos Month. If you need to get started, delete photos off your phone you don’t need from last month. If you have VHS tapes or other videotapes, get them digitized. That’s low-hanging fruit.
You can also gather everything into one location in your house. Sort by major category. Watch the six-minute video. Stay connected. Do something with your pictures every week.
Start thinking about what you could do to prevent losing pictures from fire, technology, or disaster.
Share this information with someone who is overwhelmed by their pictures. Many people have no idea what to do.
Remember the steps: organize, digitize, preserve.
There are many moving parts. You’re not alone. Everyone who cares about family memories is facing similar challenges.
There are resources, help, and inspiration available.
Thank you so much for hanging out with me. We’ll see you next week. Take care.
