(Archived) photo collection project

[rocklobster7413 0]

Hello, my fellow Evernote users. Okay, that sounded a bit silly. Anyway, to the point. I need some suggestions on a major project I am about to undertake.

I have pictures of my family, including my parents when they were toddlers in 1935/36. I have family photos from all over the many places we lived and all siblings (four) are equally included, plus parents. Some relatives are included, though, we lived overseas for much of our childhood. I also have photos from my brothers' (two) families, plus my older sister. I have tons of photos of me scuba diving, jumping from planes, producing major concerts, plus, many shots of my friends as we traveled and now from our second home in Costa Rica.

I am speaking of, most likely up to 1,000 photos. I have come up with a few ways I can handle this:

1) just scan everything as it comes up, save it to a 2 Terabyte storage system, plus, back them up on DVDs, which will be stored at my bank. Then, when complete, I would use my Mind Map program to work out the best way to let my family see these images and have THEM, each of them, decide what they are after. What will they really use, with the knowledge that much more information is safe.

I could then design and set up these "albums."

2) same as above, but, I get them the images they want, but, they design and create the photo album of their design, keeping me out of that part. I basically supply the material I have, from there, I can narrow down what I send them and off they go.

3) I decide how to divide up these images, understanding that one image may be important to a number of family members. I don't like this one very much, for, however I decide what belong where I will be incorrect.

Ideas on that part? I am leaning to number 2.

Next and last series of questions:

1) in all of the scenarios above, I have myself copying photos of all types onto DVDs, then backing them up. However, this allows NO real input from anyone should I need some help. Just a fact. Though, I could give them an address to my Infrant server, which I am using in RAID configuration for back-ups of everything.

2) I could do the most basic of breaking down of the images, e.g. a photo has my mom, my day, and my sister in the shot. That can be put into four categories, my father, my mother, my sister, or family images.

I could do this on Evernote, though, it would take up a lot of space. Now, I have plenty of space left. With only just under 2,000 notes, I am at such a low monthly average, I could make a number of notebooks available to family members, hoping to get them to join the premium version, and then allow them to tell their story of what they remember of the image at hand. I suspect that between us four siblings, plus my mom (the greatest dad has passed), I would find a variety of stories, from different perspectives.

Then, I could take the images, put them in a very simple format, latest images first, earliest images last. I would then have it made into a simple, though, not too inexpensive I fear, book. Sure, I could build a movie to do this, but, what a great family book for everyone. I would leave pages so that they could enter new thoughts. Plus, if they have the premium Evernote, they can start their own notebooks, then share them with us, as a new chapter to the book, should they wish to do so. If not, all is fine.

Question: would the approach of using Evernote and notebooks just kill the program on my end by making to in information heavy with all of the photos? NOTE: The photos in the Evernote notebooks, would NOT be the size of the images I would have on disk when people have decided how they would like to proceed.

Can you tell me if I am in the wrong program for such a project? Any other ideas?

I have the feeling that I have collected so much information on so many subjects that I don't go and review what I have as often as I would like to do so. It is daunting, other than it is one of the best tools when one has a long and tough medical battle. All of my records, including reports, images, even audio interviews are on my notebook about my 6 year journey with a nasty cancer. But, there is so much that I will never need, yet, I will also never deleted it, for then we all understand that I would need that information.

Thank you for any assistance you can offer me.

All the best,

Stephen Carey

stephen@stephencarey.com

www.stephencarey.net

www.stephencarey.com Both of these are over due by weeks for updates. But, trust me, please, I am getting there and I bet you will like what you see and read. Thank you.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I did this for my family a few years ago. I don't know about your family, but I knew I'd get little to no input from my siblings. So my approach was to scan all the photos and then I would decide which ones were presented to my siblings (rather than overload them with the entire lot. IME, sometimes too much can make their eyes glaze over.) At the same time, once I was done, I didn't want to have to be the one responsible for putting together any albums they may want or enlargements/reprints. (Your option #2.) I found this software (it has a free trial, too) that allows you to quickly put together a slideshow with music & different chapters. The final dvd can be played on a computer or a standalone dvd player. It also includes the option to save the original photos on the dvd (in an organized fashion). THIS was the selling point for me b/c my siblings could view the photos on their tv & if they wanted any enlargements/reprints, the file was already on their dvd.

Another thing I do is make sure I add any data in the meta data of the image. This way, if copies get passed around & handed down, it's in the image & they don't have to rely upon a third party organizing program to identify who is in the photo.

FYI, I don't think the other family members would need to have premium EN accounts to add info to the photos. I think you would though & you'd need to impart permissions to allow them to modify/add to the images. OTOH, if you wanted to organize the images in a particular order, EN may not be the best medium since EN organizes your photos based upon your search criteria. BUT, for a work in progress, you could try it.

Another consideration regarding the final book, for my purposes, I didn't want a hard copy. I'm the baby of the family & I'm 54. My siblings are all 15+ years older than I. None of us are interested in having more "stuff" to have to keep. DVDs allow you to savor the memories but not have a big book you have to find a place for. Then as far as the next generations, it's much easier (and cheaper) to send them DVDs and easier to replace them, if they are lost or break. One of my cousins did a fabulous job on a big, hard copy book & it's very lovely. I think it's nice to have something like that, but I think it's also nice to have the digital version too.

Good luck - I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun with this project!

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

Another thought... My mom is 93 & our family is pretty much spread across the U.S. So one thing I've done in recent years is video tape her talking about her life. It's easy/inexpenseive to share via DVD (for older/non-computer savvy family members who are more comfortable with playing a DVD on their tv), Facebook/Youtube for younger/computer savvy family members. This may be something you'd want to do with your mom rather than or in addition to her entering notes via something like EN. Today's pocket cams (Flip, Kodak Zi8, etc) are pretty high quality, easy to tote & easy to transfer to a computer. The thing I find fascinating is that future generations will be able to see & hear their great great great great grandmother talking about her life.