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Meet A Photo Organizer: Marianne Behler of Lifetime Photo Solutions

We talked to Marianne Behler, the woman behind Michigan-based Lifetime Photo Solutions. Marianne’s in the business of helping people make sense of their photo collections, meticulously going through hundreds of images to determine which captured memories are worth keeping and preserving. In this exclusive interview, Marianne reveals how she became a photo organizer, shares some of her most notable projects, and gives some advice for folks who’d like to start organizing their own photos.

Marianne Behler

Marianne Behler

What made you decide to become a Photo Organizer?

I became a Photo Organizer and a member of the Association of Personal Photo Organizers (APPO) after reading about and immediately contacting Cathi Nelson, who started APPO in 2010. Coincidently people were asking me to organize their photos, digitize their photos, organize their digital photos, and create photo books for them. People love their children and their families; they love taking photos and sharing their stories. But they have no idea how to do it, combined with little time and a sense of urgency.

I converse with people about their photos, their life, and what they might wish to do with their photo collection—their vision. The client I best serve has a lifetime of photos, possibly even of their parents, grandparents, and generations beyond. They are in shoeboxes and bins, in no particular order. Some are in albums of all types, [some are in] old scrapbooks or newer scrapbooks that they now want to reduce in number. They have digital photos on cameras, phones, and other devices. They want something created for their children and grandchildren that will highlight the best of the best of their photos and the stories that make them special—their legacy.

 

organized photo scrapbook

A sample of Marianne’s work

First, I complete a photo assessment of their photo collection, taking pictures and making notes. I prepare a report which includes my recommendation for phases to complete their work—organizing and scanning printed photos is typically the first phase. And that is where a Nixplay frame comes in! Because the sorting, organizing and digitizing of a photo collection takes time, the immediate “I love this” and “I love what you are doing” comes from getting their pictures back into their lives, when they see them again. Imagine seeing their parent’s photos, their own childhood photos, pictures of the home where they once lived, images of their travels, and school photos, all coming back into their lives after not seeing them for years. What a thrill!

Can you tell us about the most fulfilling project you’ve managed?

This is a hard story to tell. It is the story of John McAuliffe, a man who wanted to have his story told. Initially, we were going to tell his story and his wife’s separately, but his wife died. We then revisited the idea of John telling his own story. Unfortunately, John’s Parkinson’s disease had greatly diminished his ability to both remember and communicate. Each time I visited John, his story got bigger and longer. There were more and more pictures and memorabilia to sort through.

Finally, I enlisted the help of his family. And, his story became the story of John and his wife Annetta—both their families had immigrated to America and they had beautiful stories to tell. The long and short of it was that John lived “just” long enough to receive a copy of his book, with the pictures and stories of his life! He and his sons each received a copy of his book, and they also ordered 50 smaller copies for other family and friends. John died just three weeks after, and his life and story were proclaimed by the priest at his funeral because of his book. He truly left a legacy of their lives for his children, grandchildren, and the friends who knew him. Their family stories are being featured in Jackson, Michigan, in a gallery talk on immigration to America. They are using the book and pictures from the book for the gallery talk.

 

Marianne and her client, John McAuliffe

Marianne and her client, John McAuliffe

How has Nixplay helped your job as a legacy keeper?

Nixplay offers me a way to help get my clients’ photos back into their lives! Because a story of a lifetime takes time to curate and tell, Nixplay offers my clients a way to relive their lives immediately. The new stories being told can also be easily combined with my clients’ legacies because of the present-day technology offered by Nixplay. Our children, our grandchildren, and their daily lives and accomplishments can all meld into their Nixplay digital frame from anywhere and everywhere.

 

organized photo scrapbook

More of Marianne’s work

What advice can you give to our readers who’d like to start organizing their own photo collection?

Hire a photo organizer and purchase a Nixplay digital frame that your photo organizer can manage. Have your photo organizer import both your newly organized and digitized photos onto your Nixplay frame, and have your children and grandchildren add photos to your playlists so you can see and be part of their daily lives. This would be an awesome Christmas or holiday present for all the grandparents and parents on your list! The gifts that are so well appreciated are usually those that elicit memories, and a Nixplay frame can achieve just that.

nancy mcfarland APPO nixplay save your photos month

Meet A Professional Photo Organizer: Nancy McFarland of SoCal Photo Solutions

Nixplay has partnered with the Association of Personal Photo Organizers (APPO) for the Save Your Photos initiative, a public service outreach campaign that teaches individuals how they can preserve life’s irreplaceable photos, videos, and documents in case of an unforeseen accident or disaster. Visit the Save Your Photos website for more information.

We’re ending Save Your Photos Month on a high note with an exclusive interview with Nancy McFarland, the woman behind SoCal Photo Solutions and a founding member of the Association of Personal Photo Organizers (APPO). Nancy has been a professional photo organizer since 1995, and she can be counted on to help you tell your unique family stories through your photos, videos, and other memorabilia. Whether you’re thinking of starting a career as a professional photo organizer or just want to learn how to organize your images in a better way, you’ll definitely learn a lot from Nancy. Read on!

How did you become a professional photo organizer?

“Very good question. I had a scrapbooking business—many people started this way. I found that my favorite thing to do was to help people get their photos organized in order to get them into the album, and I would help them for hours and hours for free.

And I realized that that was the part of my job that was really the most significant, and which I had the most talent at. I started charging for that service, and I found this little niche that I’m very good at.”

Nancy McFarland main image

 

What is your photo organization process?

“The first step would be to gather all the photos into a central location because most people have photos all over the place. They have it in the closet, in the drawer. So the process from there would be getting rid of the doubles. They all have photos of, say, a baby, and they take ten pictures of the same baby. It’s about getting all the extraneous photos to get to the most important ones that you care about, that are worth saving, preserving, and enjoying.

Then comes the organization part, and that is so personal to whoever I’m working with. Some people think chronologically, year by year, and some people want them organized by child or by theme, which is really much easier to do with a large collection. Like, here are all the Christmas pictures. Here are all the birthday pictures. Here are all the ancestors. Do a very broad sweep and not focus on the details. So you can get through to all of them.

nancy mcfarland photo box for nixplay

I like to find out from my clients where they would think to look for the photo. For a picture of a vacation that she took in Italy with her husband, is this going to go in the year wherein they visited Italy? Is this going to go in a separate travel section, and then Italy? So if she needs that picture, she can find it quickly.

The next step is answering how they plan to enjoy their photos. Scanning is a process that we do here, and we do it in-house. So it’s up to the people to send it out, but we have all the scanners and facilities to do that here. And we have lots of different scanners. We have slide scanners, and we have high-speed photoscanners, we have scanners that can do larger photos, and stitching programs for if they have scrolls or very large photos. You can scan into smaller pieces and stitch them together so it looks like a line.

Now, what do they want to do with the scanned photos? That’s where Nixplay comes in, so now they can enjoy the photos on a digital frame they can look at anytime. It’s one thing to scan them and put them on a flash drive, but enjoying them is another matter.

What’s the most challenging part of your job?

“It’s very focused, and I really can only focus for three or four hours. After three to four hours, you see the clients’ eyes rolling back in their heads. Ýou can’t do it for eight to 10 hours a day. You have to take a break, you have to step away. I guess that’s the most difficult. It’s very focused and concentrated, and so it requires all your concentration and energy, so you can’t do it for that long all a time.

What’s the most fulfilling project you’ve managed?

“So I organized this woman’s photos of her and her children, and then she brought out the heritage photos and she didn’t know who the people were. And so she brought her mother in to help us. Her mother lives in an assisted living home, and she kind of apologized beforehand since her mother was becoming forgetful. But we had the best time. We got to chat and she told us stories about her boyfriends and her childhood, stories that my client had never heard before. 

nancy mcfarland photo box for nixplay

While she was looking at the pictures, it was just spurring all these memories that came up. Maybe she couldn’t even remember if she had breakfast that day, but pictures go to a different part of your brain. The long-term memory is not in the same place as your short-term memory, so people with Alzheimer’s, who have memory loss—she remembered her address from childhood. So it was amazing. When we were done, my client called me up the next day, and she told me, ‘I have not had that much fun with my mom in so many years.” That was just really memorable, special to me.”

What’s your advice to people who’d like to start organizing their own photos?

“The hardest thing about the whole process is to just start because most people say it’s a ‘someday’ project. They say, ‘oh, I meant to do this someday.’ So I think the most important step would be to start.

It doesn’t really matter how you start. You don’t have to start at any timeframe. Pick a box, any box. If you happen to know your most important pictures, that would be the best. Pick out the milestone pictures first. If you happen to know where those are, great! If not, just start.”

Interview has been edited for brevity.

 

 

Nancy McFarland, founder of SoCal Photo Solutions has 25 years’ experience working with people who are overwhelmed with their printed & digital photo chaos.  She organizes, digitizes and archives family photo collections offering personalized photo solutions for creating a family legacy.

Nixplay blog Molly Bullard Save Your Photos Month

Why You Should Ask A Professional Photo Organizer To Help You Downsize Your Photo Collection

Nixplay has partnered with the Association of Personal Photo Organizers (APPO) for the Save Your Photos initiative, a public service outreach campaign that teaches individuals how they can preserve life’s irreplaceable photos, videos, and documents in case of an unforeseen accident or disaster. Visit the Save Your Photos website for more information.

Downsizing. Living with less. The desire for a smaller environmental footprint. These are some of the terms used to describe the process of moving out of a large house to a smaller apartment or the choice to live in a place with less square footage.

With this goal in mind, the first step requires you to sort through your belongings in order to prioritize what you want to bring with you.

“Prospective downsizers exceed upsizers nearly 3 to 1,” according to San Francisco-based pickup, storage, and delivery service CityStash.

For over 13 years, professional photo organizer Molly Bullard has been helping individuals and families sort, digitize, and share their memorabilia. Molly, a member of the Association of Personal Photo Organizers (APPO), found a niche market for her services in 2005 when digital cameras were first introduced to the consumer market. It hit a lightning pace with the launch of high-quality cell phone pictures and offerings of inexpensive digital and cloud storage.

Last spring, Molly got a call from a son that was helping his mom downsize from their family home. His goal was to work with Molly to sort through all their photos to find “the keepers,”  scan the originals and display the favorites on a digital photo frame. Although living with less of her possessions, he envisioned the frame as a bridge for her to enjoy all her favorite memories, albeit in a smaller space.

After hearing his story, Molly recommended he purchase the Nixplay Edge 8” photo framewhich would fit nicely on his mother’s side table. Molly found Nixplay frames incredibly easy to use, and she personally has the same frame in her own home. She uses the Nixplay iPhone App to load her favorites from scanned picture sets, mixing in recent pictures and videos from her camera roll.

Needless to say, the Nixplay Edge turned out to be a hit gift.

With the complexity consumers face when managing the not-always-fun technical aspect of digital photos, Molly appreciates the simplicity of Nixplay frames. she first learned about Nixplay from a client she had over five years ago. Her client’s son set one up on his mother’s desk, and he would send pictures of their grandchildren living in a different state. There would be recent images of the grandchildren rotating through the slideshow every few days, and Molly’s client didn’t have to lift a finger.

With Molly and her fellow members of the Association of Personal Photo Organizers (APPO) always available to help guide clients in organizing and digitizing their photos, there’s no more reason for your memories to be lost forever. 

Molly Bullard is the founder of Seattle Photo Organizing, a company that specializes in transforming diverse collections of archives into accessible memories. For over 13 years she has been guiding clients through their photos, slides, film or video, and digital images to find the images that best tell their story. With deep technical knowledge and a highly tuned visual eye, Molly organizes and scans all these memories to create online digital family archives, elegant photo books, captivating photo walls, custom videos, and personalized digital photo training for Mac, PC and iPhone/Android users.

Call Molly to partner with you on your project so you can simply Simplify, Remember, and Share.

Homer-Speer-Sr-World-Cruise-onboard-costume-party

Recounting One Family’s Past Through Pictures

Nixplay has partnered with the Association of Personal Photo Organizers (APPO) for the Save Your Photos initiative, a public service outreach campaign that teaches individuals how they can preserve life’s irreplaceable photos, videos, and documents in case of an unforeseen accident or disaster. Visit the Save Your Photos website for more information.

You can’t put a price on your family’s old photos, postcards, documents, and other mementos. These irreplaceable relics of a bygone era can never be replaced, and as such, should be handled and stored with utmost care.

This was truly the case with Homer Speer Jr., who lovingly kept the pictures and slides of his late father, Homer Sr., who lived at the turn of the 20th century. To better preserve his family’s legacy, Homer Jr. got in touch with professional photo organizer Zoe Morrison of My Beautiful Life Story.

“I’ve scanned hundreds of Homer’s collection of vintage photos and postcards, learning the stories behind most of the family treasures he had collected. I’ve learned a lot of local history along the way while preserving important mementos and photos.”

Historic adventures, revisited

Through the photos, Zoe and Homer Jr. were able to retrace Homer Sr.’s footsteps around the world. One trip that stood out was Homer Sr.’s visit to Instituto Butantan in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he studied the effects of the venom of various deadly snakes.

“Turns out, anti-venom research has been conducted in San Paulo for over a century, making it a world-renowned center for sera and other pharmaceutical development,” says Zoe. “The elder Homer was educating himself about serum development and the medical advances that would come around the globe from research being done in Brazil.”

Homer Speer Sr. inspects a cadaver in a photo from 1905.

Homer Speer Sr. inspects a cadaver in a photo from 1905.

To preserve his family’s legacy, Zoe taught Homer Jr. how to label, rotate, and order images on his computer. She also helped Homer Jr. create a video montage of his family’s photos.

“Dr. Speer lived a colorful life and left a deep lasting visual legacy for his son,” says Zoe. “While Homer and I scanned we talked about the photos and share memories. I can imagine I am traveling this junket too, set in the early 20th century.”

Keeping family memories alive through photographs

Shortly after this project was completed, the Speers left their home of 40 years, downsizing to a much smaller house.

With a Nixplay digital photo frame, the Speers can view their family photos anytime they want, and their visitors will be delighted by the stories hidden in the pictures. It’s a great way to always have your family history close by.

“You know how sometimes life has a way of working in funny little vignettes; when you are doing something you really love with another person who has a passion for sharing their stories and inviting you on their journey?” asks Zoe. “I’ve gotten to walk into the past with Homer and have learned some wonderful things.”

At age six, Zoe rode her first two-wheeler into the heart of her neighbors. Their stories and photos opened a world of discovery within those few small blocks. After a 30-year career in culinary arts, she’s gone back to her roots, collecting stories, organizing photos, and making new friends through her business MyBeautifulLifeStory.com.

peter bennett fotoflow solutions photo mess

Meet A Photo Organizer: Peter Bennett Of FotoFlow Solutions

Nixplay has partnered with the Association of Personal Photo Organizers (APPO) for the Save Your Photos initiative, a public service outreach campaign that teaches individuals how they can preserve life’s irreplaceable photos, videos, and documents in case of an unforeseen accident or disaster. Visit the Save Your Photos website for more information.

 

Here at Nixplay, we believe in the importance of digitizing and preserving your photos. Think of it as insurance for your memories: You might consider it irrelevant at present, but you’ll wish you did it sooner when an accident or a disaster strikes.

The reason a lot of people put off this task is not that they lack the skills necessary for the job. With technology advancing at such a rapid pace, organizing your photos has become easier than ever. The main hurdle is lack of time–with our fast-paced lives, carving out the time to dig out, scan, and arrange your photos can be nearly impossible.

Luckily, you don’t have to do all these. Professional photo organizers, like Los Angeles-based Peter Bennett of FotoFlow Solutions, can accomplish this task for you so you can better preserve your family’s legacy. Read on to learn how he became a photo organizer, his processes, and the pros and cons of the job.

1. What led you to become a photo organizer?

I’ve been a professional photographer for most of my career. I started my own digital photo agency in the late ‘90s, and it was there where I learned to manage and work with large collections of digital photos.

My family has always taken a lot of photos. My maternal grandfather owned a photo studio on the Brighton Beach Boardwalk in Brooklyn, and my father was an amateur photographer and professional filmmaker. Between everyone, there is a huge collection of prints, slides, and negatives going back over 100 years.

A small part of Peter's family photo collection.

A small part of Peter’s family photo collection.

One day I looked at the family photo collection I had inherited. [I realized that] while my professional collection and my agency’s photos were all meticulously organized, my own family photos were a complete disaster. I was the guy who is supposed to know how to do this stuff, and I realized that if I was having problems, everybody else was probably having them too. That’s when I decided to become a professional photo organizer.

2. How do you go about organizing your clients’ photos?

Every client’s situation and needs are different, so every job starts off with a conversation. This is the time to find out why they called me and what they would like done. It’s also an opportunity for me to give them suggestions and explain certain things.

Essentially what I do is collect all the digital images, remove the duplicates, and then sort them into a chronological folder structure that can be viewed by a cataloging software. Once that is set up, we discuss a workflow, a backup system, and some best practices moving forward.

3. What’s the most challenging thing about your job?

Changing people’s attitudes about their photo collections, and teaching them better ways to interact with their images so that they don’t have to call me again in the future.

When people call me, they are stressed and anxious about their photo collections, which is such a shame as pictures should be enjoyable. My role is to alleviate some of their concern, simplify things for them, and impart them with some confidence going forward.

With all the benefits of the digital age, there are also some downsides, namely the sheer number [of photos] that we are dealing with. We can’t keep going at this rate of accumulation, lest we start losing the emotional connections to our photos and to our histories.

Nixplay frames can help you establish a better connection with your memories.

Nixplay frames can help you establish a better connection with your memories.

You can’t exactly curl up with 30 or 40,000 photos like we did with old family albums. Nixplay Frames are an excellent and innovative way to have our photos present in our daily lives and connect them to our memories. They really bridge the gap between how we traditionally viewed photos and what’s possible with technology today.

4. Can you tell us about the most fulfilling project you’ve managed?

Honestly, any time I see a client smile. Like when I’ve scanned some of their old prints or negatives and they can finally share them with other family members, or when they’re able to sit down with their photo archive without worry or concern. It feels pretty fulfilling.

Peter Bennett has been working as a professional photographer for almost 30 years. In 1998, he started his own photo agency, Ambient Images, which represented over 30 photographers. Peter has also been a photography instructor at the Los Angeles Center of Photography since 2009. In 2015, Peter started FotoFlow Solutions to help people and families manage their personal photo collections. His mission is to help everyone get the information and resources needed to manage and enjoy their priceless photos collections.

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