One of the many things we get up to is the removal of photos from albums. 'Well' you might say - how hard can that be? And I would say to you - sometimes it is indeed easy - slipping photos from plastic sleeves, sometimes it's slightly challenging - unsticking photos from old magnetic 'sticky' albums and sometimes it's so difficult you have to walk away several times before facing one more photo that seems to have been super glued down and then ironed onto the page.
What's the 'secret' part of all this? Well I've come to realize that removing photos from a sticky album, often with the help of professional tools such as a hairdryer, palette knife and dental floss, is one of the greater joys in life.
Now this may sound a bit rough, but I can assure you every care is taken to coax the photos from their pages and white gloves are employed at all times to ensure no oils are transferred to the photo's surface.
Why not just leave them in the album? Well you can, but those old albums aren't archival quality - which simply means they are made of paper containing chemicals that will promote the deterioration of the photos - whereas archival quality boxes will slow that process right down. Of course, if the albums contain special writing or other flourishes that need to be preserved then it's best to keep the albums intact and scan whole pages, but I always prefer to remove the photos if I can.
And don't forget, a digitized album is a shareable album - meaning all the precious photos no
longer reside with only one family member. This alone is worth the scanning and digitizing process as so many more people get to enjoy their photos! Wait - good name for a website :)
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