Flood Damaged Photos

The news has reported some areas of the UK have been hit by a month's worth of rain in just 24 hours, rivers are bursting their banks and householders are being flooded. Along with the soggy carpets and blown electronics people have to face the heart breaking loss of treasured family photos. If you've been flooded, what can you do?

First, get all photos (including slides and negatives) out of the water as soon as possible.

Second, which photos should you tackle first? I'd go for any images in photo frames. Carefully remove the photo from the frame, what you need to do - as carefully as possible - is to get the print away from the glass. If the image is wet there's a very good chance that if it dries in contact with the glass the image will fuse to it.

Third, slides and negatives. Carefully prize each strip apart. If the negatives are wet you won't do any more harm by washing any foul water or dirt off the surface using clean water. Then allow each strip to drip making sure each strip or slide is isolated. Never force dry any image however tempting it might seem. As negatives dry you'll probably find they twist. Don't worry about that you can either leave the twist in place or gently apply some pressure to get them back into shape.

Prints can be the most difficult. If you know the associated negatives are safe you can always get reprints made, if you only have the prints you have a challenge ahead. If the print is soiled and wet you can rinse it in clean water. Then you need to allow the print to dry. Ideally just lay the print FACE UP on blotting paper. The paper will absorb moisture and the print can dry slowly, minimising damage.

On no account should you allow the image side of any print to come into contact with the image side of any other print, the two may fuse together. If you don't have blotting paper place the prints FACE UP on towels, old sheets, washing up cloths. Allow your prints to dry slowly, never feel tempted to force drying (put that hair dryer down). Don't worry about prints curling as they dry.

Finally, probably in a few days, when your prints are finally dry you can stack them and apply light pressure to remove any curl.

Here's the sales plug. Once they're dry have the images scanned ASAP. You never know when the water will hit again, and you can't be sure discoloration won't set in over coming days. Plus you'll have a secure record of the photos that were damaged. If there is any staining or distortion it's far easier to correct digitally than trying to twist or re-colour an old print.

Some of the most serious damage will be photo albums. If the prints come loose treat them as described above. If the prints were stuck in the album use a sharp knife to remove the pages from the binding; stack each page safely upright, not touching any other. When finally dry, this will probably take longer that your other images, you can scan the photos or carefully remove the prints to put into another album.