‘Happy tears’: how digitising old photos, slides and negatives unlocks memories to share with friends and family
- Every picture tells a story, and analogue photos, taken with non-digital cameras in the pre-smartphone era, can be a trove of personal memories
- Digitising them lets you share these pictures of friends and family made young again, and bring back moments from your childhood, travels and career
This may seem like a sad story: it begins with a boy with few memories of his father, who died when he was seven years old.
It’s why Mitch Goldstone cherishes his only picture with his dad – a snapshot at Disneyland taken during the late 1960s, decades before smartphone cameras were even thought of.
But this story, and the personal stories that follow, aren’t sad. And more than half a century later, Goldstone has done something with that memory.
He is pursuing a career focused on the joy of rediscovery. He and his long-time partner, Carl Berman, run ScanMyPhotos, part of a niche industry that specialises in turning the billions of analogue slides, undeveloped negatives and printed pictures from the pre-smartphone era into digital treasure chests.
“There’s nothing else like it, there are so few businesses doing something that makes people cry when they get the product back,” Goldstone says. “Fortunately, they are usually happy tears.”
Giving analogue photos new digital life can free long-buried memories and make them feel fresh.
