Photographer Offers Tips for Tornado Damaged Photos

April 15, 2009

In an effort to assist residents of Murfreesboro suffering from tornado damage, Shacklett’s Photography is providing an instructional class on preserving and minimizing the damage from the recent tornadoes this past Friday. Class will be held 6-8:30pm this Thursday, April 16 and Thursday, April 30 at Sports*Com. Gloria Christy of Shacklett’s Photography will demonstrate onsite how to restore damaged photos and give instructions to assist at home.

Bryan Barrett talks with Gloria Christy about now’s the time to be careful with the photos we come across in the clean-up process…

In the meantime, Shacklett’s Photography has some helpful tips to save your precious memories in photography – The goal is to be reasonable and realistic:
- Realize that you may not be able to save them all, but YOU MAKE THE RULES - YOU DETERMINE WHAT YOU WANT TO SAVE.
- Consider all the pivotal moments that you want to tell —DEAL WITH ABSOLUTE FAVORITES.
- Loosely Organize them in a way that MAKES SENSE TO YOU ~ You may want to save the most recent photos first.
- You may or may not want to keep the BADLY DAMAGED PHOTOS, depending upon their content, whether it may be “the only photo” of someone.
- Discard duplicates and those severely damaged photos —Again, FIGHT FEELINGS OF DISPAIR BY BEING REASONABLE AND PRACTICAL!
- You do not have to perfectly organize the photos– DO WHAT YOU CAN to simply RESCUE and PRESERVE the images you find. There will be plenty of time for fully “organizing” them later!
- Separate the severely damaged photos away from the ones that are not ~ and DON’T BE OVERWHELMED WITH THE PROCESS.
- Family Photos (do not attempt this with ink jet photos) that stacked together and have been wet may now be STUCK TOGETHER. If so, leave them stacked and bag them in zip-lock bags to keep them wet until you can get to where you can separate them and let them dry out on paper towel - FACE UP. Those that have DRIED OUT while stuck together may be placed in warm water which will -over a short time- loosen the surfaces away — NEVER ATTEMPT TO PULL THE PHOTOS APART UNLESS THEY ARE WET ~ and DO SO VERY CAREFULLY.
- Lay the photos on a DRY clean PLAIN WHITE PAPER TOWEL - where they can remain undisturbed to AIR DRY over time. If you find wet photos scattered about, DO NOT STACK THEM! = it is a BIG MISTAKE TO STACK PHOTOS THAT ARE WET.
- Making decisions on what to keep will help you determine what methods will be used to save your photos for the future — SOME MAY NEED RESTORATION, and eventually it is a very good idea to DIGITIZE and ARCHIVE your favorite images on EXTERNAL STORAGE DEVICES, both DVD and Hard Drive ~ to create more than one copy, and store your copy sets in different secure locations.

If you have questions or need some help, call Shacklett’s Photography at 615-893-2369. For more information about the classes, please contact Bart Fite at 895-5040 or email bfite@murfreesborotn.gov. Sports*Com is located at 2310 Memorial Blvd., Murfreesboro, TN 37129.

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