For the photo scans you really care about, create an Amazon Web Services account and throw them in an S3 bucket (first year up to 5GB is free, stupid cheap after that) so that when the optical media the scan company sends back eventually goes bad you won't loose them.
I'll check that out Frood. This is all new to me so I'm compiling ideas to work with.
Just had to share the only two Grandma paintings I kept. These were the only ones that seemed totally unique.. a break from the bowls of fruit and bad landscape paintings ...sorry Gramma.. they were really bad :(
With this one she won a contest to get your artwork on a greeting card:
Credit: justthemaid
and this one.. her only figural and piece de resistance...
wait for it.....
Victorian boudoir-Barbie on a chamber pot LOL
Credit: justthemaid
when I was a little kid I couldn't for the life of me figure out why that girl was sitting on giant eggs LOL.
You are really lucky to have photos with notes on them. A distant cousin and I once spent one whole summer scanning, emailing, and trying to identify various old photographs that his grandmother had put in a box unlabeled. If you get them scanned now, you can always work on the scrapbooks (digital preferably) sometime in the future. You can also take some of the best ones and share them with the world on Find a Grave or Ancestry.com sites.
say, how about doing an art show,as a fundraiser somewhere,
though NOT a 'real artshow' but you know what i mean...
like at some local festivals, etc, and keep the prices, either low,
hidden, for whatever some will pay, for a good cause...
that way, the art just might sell.. an at least to folks that will like it...
*also,certain thrift stores, SAD TO SAY, not all:
will take the art and keep it on the shelves NO MATTER howlong, til it sells... THIS has to be the kinds that then do 'half off sales' to clear
thing out, without trashing it.. but--you are assured that no one will buy it unless they really DO love it...
but a smalll local art thing, sounds like fun...
also,instead of taking pics of everything...
could you not just make a film? a famiy movie, or something, showing all the art work, etc.. you could sit down quite often and never tire of reseeing it... a family ambience type thing, etc...
ps:
lasty, hate to see you do something and then wish you
had kept it, so as you are doing--proceed with care...
Doubt this is any help but reminds me of my uncle. When my grandparents passed there was a ton of stuff in the attic and ...well...the whole house. He kept some WWII stuff for sure; metals, rifle, and a helmet my grandfather wore that has a bullet hole through the forehead and out the back! Turned out the helmet was too big and he just got a few stitches on the top of his head!
A few token old photos (great grand parents, etc) the rest was kinda ditched. However, he has a really cool bar in his basement and has a ton of antiques he got to decorate it and he has the things kept scattered in different places and are real conversation pieces. You can't keep it all less you build paths through your house and garage. It sucks but I'm always trying to get rid of one item for every item I bring in.
Yeah.. I don't have the nerve to toss the whole kit and caboodle like Mr.E did. It's just finding a balance of what to keep and what to get rid of. It's nice to have reminders of the past around but I'm just past the stage where I'm comfortable being surrounded by huge piles of clutter.
Before I was a climber.. I went to the flea market every weekend for years... you folks should have seen the mother of all garage sales I had to make room for Mr.E. People kept asking me if it was a multi-family garage sale or if I had an antique store that went out of business.
I could say snidish shite like "first world problem," but then the third world might say "Wish I had your problem, dildo!" We got to keep them in their place. They have no garageful of stuff. What do they know?
I got rid of stuff by the ton when Packrat Mama Liz passed away. Took me years to part with the bulk of it.
I have several boxes of slides from Boomer, my dad who recently passed. I am keeping or scanning the slides that interest me or have my friends and story on them first.
Next in priority are the photos of family. The Best Shots Only or the ONLY SHOTS of a person or activity of interest to the family at large, are what I am keeping.
I am totally ignoring the golfing legends shots, the friends we had in our RV park shots, the trailering shots, the Mexico shots, and the shots of the trip to Idaho, and so on. You need to be heartless, draw a line.
Art, that's a REAL PROBLEM. Someone took time to create it. If you appreciate art, save it. It will find its way to whom it is going.
Knickknacks from my mom's collection--only the ones which appeal to me.
Oh, don't be too careful, because it is just stuff. Please yourself, rule one in dealing with this kind of thing; who can use this is the next obvious question.
The title of this thread scared me! I finally clicked on it. I know exactly what you are talking about. Last weekend I chucked 10 big bags of 3/4" video tapes, a couple decades of work. It felt great! And now I got space in my closet.
I had a few friends, visual artists, who made a point of not keeping anything, ever. Off the easel, out the door it would go, all over town and sometimes the world. Certain pieces would magically find their way home every time they had a show.
Digital offers balance between the two and the digital file takes on a life of its own. It sounds like you got great source material, you should scan it.
Another place to look for scanning services are schools, they have the large-format flatbed scanners required & you can get decent rates as they are student-staffed. I know this kid at Cal Poly SLO if that's anywhere near you:
Then you get busy in Photoshop. I don't know exactly what you got, but there's room for all sorts of stuff on the Internet.
I took pictures of old pictures of my relatives that my great aunt wouldn't part with even for a second to get scanned. It worked great. I just propped the camera between two chairs. I raised the photo album with a few books and wham! They are pretty descent.
Let us know!