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.

On Being Let Down - or Not

Feedback from one of our clients, Stephanie, who kindly says -

"Thank you for your prompt and efficient service, I especially liked being able to view photos online, an unexpected bonus. It was also refreshing to view the photos online, an unexpected bonus. It was also refreshing that you actually sent the pictures before being paid, very trusting. I hope you don't get let down too often."

So, why send before payment? This is a bit of a bee in my bonnet, paying in advance. Pretty much everything I buy, in our local High Street, at Lakeside or Bluewater you can touch and feel before you get to the till. Marks & Spencer have built a brilliant reputation in their generous returns policy. I hesitated when I started to use Amazon but I've had experiences when I've had to return items and they too are brilliant. I'd like 1Scan's clients to have the same peace of mind and returning work first, then invoicing, does, I hope, give you that feeling.

How often have we been let down? This year there are two events that have raised my blood pressure and turned me into Victor Meldrew. Earlier this year I was contacted by a teacher at a public school in London. She was arranging a class photobook (nice idea) but she had to get the ball rolling. Would I be prepared to scan first, then be paid about six weeks later when the book is sold. Idiot me said OK.

Fast forward to September, our invoice isn't paid. Teacher has moved on, school denies any responsibility even though deal was confirmed on school headed notepaper. Do I sue for a few quid or bite the bullet? Sure it's a matter of principle but for much less than £75 is it really worth the bother?

Then just as I was closing down on Friday I got an email newsletter from Head Teacher of a local secondary school (budget £6M+). Over the earlier months of this year I've scanned 300 to 400 prints to drum up support for a fund raising day. I haven't charged, and don't expect any money, but was told I'd get a mention in their publicity. So I was particularly annoyed to see in the newsletter that every other company involved (including at least one who'd charged for their services) was fulsomely thanked and their company logos / adverts reproduced in front of over 3,000 parents. Was 1Scan there? No.

Yes Stephanie, we do get let down. Despite this we'll continue to scan, mail, then charge - I'd feel bad doing it any other way. But if another school asks for a concession, or a freebie, forget it; two bad apples have blown it for the rest.

Don't Use Us

As you probably know, we upload scanned photos into an online photo album. It's a great way for you to access your images quickly, to share them with friends and family, and access a range of associated services. This includes prints from your scans. You get a quick, good quality service with prompt postal delivery.

Over the last three years many people have taken advantage of the associated services, although sales of prints on drinks coasters have fallen below expectations.

So here goes - don't use our online service. Why? Why, when it's so good?

Simply because you can get better. The suppliers our online service use are a fine balance of price and service. If you want top quality then you need a specialist supplier. Which one? We're pointing people in the direction of point101.com who are able to deliver a top quality range of prints. There are times when only the best will do, so check out point 101 soon.

pogoPlug and File Security

A couple of months ago we installed a pogoplug unit, mainly to rationalise storage for our CD ripping services. This little device converts our many USB hard drives into shareable network attached storage (NAS). This has worked so well for backing up digital music files we've extended it to covering our image files.

The big differences between the two services are data volumes and client types. Ripping 1,000 CDs will create 100 Gbytes or more, while we can get 7,000 images onto a CD. We get work in from many clients per day for photo scanning, CD ripping is a much smaller number per month. However from time to time we have photo scanning clients who do generate large data files (one client last week had 300 35mm slides scanned into TIFFs, some 6 DVDs worth of data) and of course nobody wants their data to be lost.

So what we've done, and this may not be our final workflow, is to set up a folder on one Mac into which we drop copies of the image files just after we mail them back to clients. This rejoices in the ultra dull title of "Clients Out". I invested in a program called Chronsync which is a backup program. That monitors that folder and copies newly added sub-folders to a backup on a 1TB iOmega hard drive connected to our pogoplug. With minimal effort sent image files are now being backed up, and we all breathe an extra sigh of relief.

One is a Loneley Number

Every photo is unique, of course, so why wouldn't you want a unique number for your scans?

For me it's been pretty obvious but it does take a bit of thinking about. Many clients want us to scan their images into several folders, each one given a meaningful title so they are easier to organise. Just suppose though at some point you want to change things around, for example you want to sort through your photos and send a folder of your kids photos over to Granny. This will probably pick images from each of those folders, and this is where the problem will arise if you don't have a unique numbering system.

With our approach each folder contains uniquely numbered images. You can copy any of those photos into a new folder without problems, you won't have to renumber five 01s, four 02s and nine 08s.

One small nightmare avoided. Unique photos with unique numbers.

Free Postage This Weekend

Having seen the weather forecast this weekend we thought we'd do something to try to brighten our spirits, so here it is - free postage. Yes, if you mail your photos / slides / negatives we'll scan them and return them to you at no cost.

That's it, free postage. You can save a significant sum, today our return post bill was nearly £100 so we expect a lot of clients to be happy next week. If you're thinking of getting a scanning project under way now's your chance, a small incentive to get you going.

Free postage - get those pictures off to us now.

Worldwide Pinhole Camera Day

This looks like an interesting diversion for anyone interested in photography, Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day on 29th April looks like a great idea.