Thank you, Nanny! I love sharing my dad's photos.

I agree with you about albums. I think printing is sadly neglected. Not only are today's prints likely to outlast anything saved to a computer or disk, but they're more likely to be viewed by succeeding generations. No matter when you were born, it's more comfortable to sit down with a couple of relatives and a photo album than it is to gather around a tablet or laptop.

I have a good photo printer and do a lot of printing. The ink is costly, so when Mpix or Adoramapix (my two favorite online printers) have sales, I take advantage of that.

The only thing is . . . my albums, like me, are totally disorganized. I'm happy just to get the photos safely stored in sleeves, even if the years and subjects are all mixed together. :-)

Future generations will enjoy today's photos much more if a story or explanation is included with each image. You could go to the trouble of importing the images into a document editor such as MicroSoft Word and write a little something about the image. At minimum, include the name, date of the photo, and relationship to yourself or someone else. Other detail can be added such as birth date, parents, and the event of the photo such as 1st grade, 1st day of school, maybe it was a party or you were recording her image at a particular stage of life. Maybe you shot the picture when you made a long trip to visit the subject's home.

A series of related photos could be included in a "story" article. Also make a keepsake set of nicer photos to accompany the article.

If the preceding is too much work, instead make a text file without pictures of the same information above. The important thing is to record that additional information else it will be lost. Give each photo a title or number by which it can be referenced. Included dates are good, too.

A little information will make the photos come alive to future readers and enhance the value of the collection.

So true, Jem. I'm in the process of putting together a photo book about the previous generations of my family. I know my kids and grandkids will appreciate it someday. It has so much text that I'm undecided about whether to include it in the book (my preference) or create a separate binder to accompany the photo book.

Right now I'm just gathering material and waiting for a good sale from my favorite photo book printer (Adoramapix.com).

I dream of doing that Jem; have a printer and TIME, but find the process of doing it on the computer so frustrating (out of my comfort zone) that I just can't make myself face it. I can't quite envision family time of the future, that would include looking at digital photos...(.maybe videos), but reading a "tour guide of an event" on the big screen of a TV....doesn't do it for me.

I have to add, here, that I don't like reading books on an iPad, Kindle etc. either. Maybe it is the part of me that is resisting technology....even tho I love and live many hours here at my computer.

Nanny, I still prefer real books too--even though I recently started a thread on ebooks. :-)

I've been thinking about this a lot because I don't have any old photos of my ancestors. I do have photos of my kids. With everyone having their photos only on their phone or computer there will be so much lost. I see the day when having a photo of a family member will be very rare unless in a year book or newspaper. And yes, there won't be any conversations after Thanksgiving dinner involving a shoe box of old photos or the old family photo album. Photos will have gone full circle.

More or less I have already started doing that. My NY resolution last year was to get it completed. I actually have made a good start, but got sidelined by a number of health problems which are still top priority. For years I have been writing the stories that will go with the pictures, so that part is done. Just this week I have located a number of photos several years old that I thought were on Photobucket. When I gave up XP and went with WIN7 I found WIN7 had put a large number of folders in my Documents, with a variety of titles. (Did not make me happy, but other than that, I like WIN7.) I will be working on my "Scrapbooks" probably forever, but not trying to think of NY Resolutions any more.

Sue, with Windows you're free to add folders (also known as directories or subdirectories), delete folders (remove contents beforehand), rename them, move them, or anything else you want to do. You're not stuck with anything you don't want or something where you don't want it. And you can almost always redirect file saving feature of any program to any directory you wish, Put things where you want them, and remove what you don't use.

I think saving photos is easier when they're digital than in the old film and paper days. The image won't degrade, the colors won't change, etc. If you're serious about keeping what you have, find an online site to do so or do it yourself by making backup copies on your choice of media (thumb drives, DVDs or external drives, whichever offers the capacity you need).

Having said all that, the millennials I know (in my family and otherwise) are much less sentimental, much less nostalgic, and not very interested in having the mementos and keepsakes of their parents and older ancestors. That's true of photos too. Maybe some you know are different.

Those in my family keep a few things here and there and that's usually enough. I think some of you are projecting your feelings onto the youngins and you may be surprised that many may not share your views about photos and other "stuff". If you think they want them, offer them to them now, let them do the organizing and keeping. See what the reaction is.

Thank you, Snidely. Of course I know that and have done a good bit of deleting and rearranging with still a lot more to do yet. Someday.

Thank you for such thoughtful responses. I've lived and visited places where famous art galleries have collections of aristocrat families...kings etc. and my guess is, they had those portraits made so their family resemblences could be noted as a historic lineage. Were they thinking about 200 years into the future? Some suggest that even those might be called sentimental ..... or maybe just "art work" that we look at today as 'the art of some artists' and not that the portraits reveal real people who have left behind a view of the life they lived. My lineage is not so important to history, but what if that photo I received of my 4 year old, and she were to become a famous space scientist, or first adventurist to Mars....wouldn't that be a valuable treasure. It came by telephone..... out there in cyber space. Who is going to capture it. I debate...post or delete.

Most of the scanning I've done of my dad's photographs (so many!) has been from negatives. It's amazing they're in pristine shape because my parents lived in Florida for 30 years. Some of the large (4x5, etc.) negatives suffered considerable damage, but the smaller one did not. They go back to the 1920s!

Re resemblances, a few years ago I came across a photo of my dad in his twenties, looking remarkably like my son. In Photoshop, I gave him a "haircut" and made it a portrait, hiding the dated 3-piece suit he was wearing. I sent it to a number of my son's friends, and without exception they all thought that's who it was.

This thread makes me want to post some more old photos. Maybe I'll do that . . . it beats vacuuming! :-)

I think the stories are important. My earlier scrapbooking has quite a bit of journaling included. I just don't have what it takes to keep it up.

I have some pictures going back to a couple of my gggg-grandparents. The generational resemblances are interesting. You look and you can tell we are related. I was reading something on genetics a while back. Not sure where it was, it was talking about how you get certain traits from the x or y chromosome and how those only come down from certain people and why a child will look more like a great-grandparent than anyone else. I'm said to look like my great-grandmother. My daughter bears a strong resemblance to hers.