Photo Preservation Secrets:
How Can I Preserve My Family Photo and Document History?
Some time your wedding photos album, scrapbooks or special collections may be showing symptoms of deteriorating with age, exposure from temperature, and humidity changes sunlight, fire or water that can damage your family photos, and your family history.
The first thing to do is plan where your you will store these valuable photos.
How Do I Store My Photos?
To preserve photos and documents first we must consider our storage, like albums, storage containers, envelopes must all be archival and acid free. Always keep paper documents or photos in an acidic free, humidity-controlled environment away from excessive light, heat, humidity, acids from papers, plastics, and adhesives, pollution, and pests.
For preserving and storing your documents or certificates use acid-free folders, and keep them in an acidfree box. NEVER STORE THEM IN THE ATTIC OR BASEMENT. Because extreme temperature or humidity changes can cause rapid deterioration accelerating the aging process. Store your photographs where a room has stable temperature and humidity.
How Can I Display My Photographs and Protect Them?:
Some plastics can release acids over time like PVC (polyvinylchloride) commonly found in store-bought binders which emits hydrochloric acid over time. Paper free of acid that is buffered will counteract the formation of more acids in the future. But using any form of plastic material is not wise because photographs can stick to plastic just like glass believe me I have had hundreds of photos come in, with this condition.
If you have a news print you would like to preserve, newspapers are made of highly acidic paper and deteriorate very fast, a good practice is to scan the information you want from them and digitally print it on acid free paper and use archival inks. If you want to frame it you should frame the acid-free copy with acid-free matting. have it framed with UV-protection glass at a Custom Framing shop. For storing photos or documents in albums dont be fooled some photo albums in scrapbooking stores or other store-bought albums with static magnetic type pages because these are highly acidic and dangerous to photos they are not archival I have seen this problem in many stores that sell photo albums.
PREPARE FOR THE UNEXPECTED
Find a safe storage location in the event of a flood, fire, or other disaster. The worst place to store them is the basement for a disaster waiting. Store negatives and prints in separate locations to decrease the possibility of an image being destroyed forever. Keep pictures away from fire places, off the floor.
COMMON PHOTO PRESERVATION CONCERNS AND SOLUTIONS
Photo Preservation Suggestions:
Do not use adhesive tapes to repair torn or damaged photographs in an attempt for preserving photos. Do not clean photos with water or solvent-based cleaners. Improper cleaning will cause serious abrasions or staining.
When the enviroment is High in humidity, do not let photographs or negatives come into contact with glass or other materials This can be a difficult problem to solve if not removed quickly. High humidity areas can cause mold or fungi development.
Old brittle certificates or documents that have been rolled up for many years can be restored but need moisture added. Placing your document in a high humid environment for several hours should make it more flexible, to test for humidity have some birch bark in the environment you will see that when it is humid it will lie flat but when it is a dry environment it will curl so when you see that the humidity is at a desired level you can carefully unroll and flatten, do not proceed if it resists or begins to crack or tear. You could then flatten it by placing the document between two pieces of blotting paper, with a heavy object on top for a few days.
One of the best ways to protect your photo collection is to have Brians Gallery a photo restoration archiving service to create digital copies more on preserving your valuable old photos
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