It’s been just over a year since the devastating Maui fires and an interview I watched on my local news station just after it happened really stuck with me. Spectrum News 1 interviewed best-selling author Rabbi Steve Leder, who I find truly amazing.
At 3:07 into the interview Rabbi Steve said, “I once asked a firefighter what do people really do when they have to run for it? What do they take with them? And he answered instantly: People, pets and pictures. The first two are obvious but pictures? Are they really more valuable than the jewelry or the art or the hard drive? The answer is yes, because what the pictures represent are moments, are time, are relationships and those are the things that fire cannot destroy and those are the things we still have even in the aftermath.”
God forbid I ever find myself in that type of frightening scenario but that’s exactly the order of things I would grab too, except that I probably would grab the hard drive because that’s where the majority of my photos are thanks to me scanning my childhood pictures during the pandemic.
I used a service called ScanMyPhotos after the recommendation of tech guru Rich DeMuro. I’d heard of ScanMyPhotos before so I wasn’t surprised by his recommendation but I just wanted to be sure since these photos are some of my most prized possessions. The photos are from growing up, my family, college and my trips to Europe with my mother. None of these can be replaced so I didn’t want to hand them over to just anyone or spend the time scanning them myself.
It turns out, ScanMyPhotos.com started out in 1990 as a boutique retail photo center in Irvine, California. Originally named 30 Minute Photos Etc., they offered fast and affordable photo processing for local customers. Today, ScanMyPhotos uses cutting edge technology and a team of trained professionals to offer photo, negative, and slide scanning, video and film transfer, and photo restoration services to millions of customers around the world.
I wrote about their service in 2022 but thought I would share it again since photos are such an important part of life and CBS News just ran a story titled, “How technology can help preserve memories for people impacted by natural disasters” which featured ScanMyPhotos. The Eye On America segment highlighted the urgency of digitally preserving your cherished photo memories before disaster strikes.
Here’s how ScanMyPhotos service works: Log on to their website, chose your package and place the order. I then watched their video on how to box up the photos and sent them off.
The most difficult part for me was organizing the photos into piles of up to 200 with photos of all the same size. For some reason, I had photos of various sizes. Then, as instructed, I took a note card of the same size (or cut it down) and wrote what each pile was about to make for easier organizing. I sent in 2,000 photos and used their concierge service so I would get updates about when my box was delivered, when ScanMyPhotos.com started to scan the photos (they even send a video of them actually being scanned) and when they were on their way back via FedEx.
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