Preserving Family Memories Through Photos with Philip Griffith

📸 In this episode of the Steadfast Care Planning podcast, Philip Griffith joins to discuss preserving family memories through photo management. Philip shares his personal caregiving experience with his mother-in-law and how that motivated him to help families capture and preserve their stories through photos.

🤳 The conversation explores the challenges families face in organizing and managing old photos, especially as technology changes over time. Philip provides helpful tips and best practices for gathering family photos in one place, properly storing and archiving originals, digitizing images, and creating photobooks that tell a family's story through the generations.

🎥 Philip explains the three ways his company PSG Photo Solutions helps families manage their photos - through online courses, coaching, and fully outsourced services. He emphasizes the importance of having treasured family photos visible in the home to spark memories and conversations.

📹 Whether you want to tackle photo organization yourself or get professional help, this episode provides guidance on how to preserve your family's precious photographic memories, and your family history, for generations to come.

In this episode they covered: 

🔹 The importance of capturing family stories and memories from the oldest living generation. 

🔹 Challenges families face when preserving and managing family photos. 

🔹 Overwhelming amount of photos, especially in the digital age. 

🔹 Difficulty in identifying people, places, and events in old photos. 

🔹 Rapidly changing technology and obsolescence of older media formats (e.g., slides, 8mm movies, VHS tapes). 

🔹 Tips and best practices for preserving and managing photos. 

🔹 Gather all photos, slides, movies, and memorabilia in one place (a "photo hub") plus many more tips and best practices. 

🔹 How Philip helps families manage their photos and how you can find out more about his free courses, coaching, and fully outsourced services.

📷 For more information on Philip's photo management services, visit:

www.PSGPhotoSolutions.com

www.TheGreatDiscovery.com/PSGPhotoSolutions

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📽️ To watch this podcast: https://youtu.be/7QtrfaYT1eY

#SteadfastInsurance #PhilipGriffith #SteadfastCarePlanning #PSGPhotoSolutions #longtermcareinsurance 

For additional information about Kelly, check her out on Linkedin or www.SteadfastAgents.com.

To explore your options for long-term care insurance, click here.

Steadfast Care Planning podcast is made possible by Steadfast Insurance LLC,
Certification in Long Term Care, and AMADA Senior Care Columbus.

Come back next time for more helpful guidance!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:27 Preserving Family Memories Through Photo Management
• 1:01 Philip's family's experience with caregiving and what motivates him to help people manage their photos.
• 1:52 Philip's family was able to learn more about their family history through the grandmother living with them.
• 3:19 There are stories that will die unless we capture them. Using photos and photobooks and memorabilia to learn more family history and pass on the family stories to the next generation.
• 3:32 Photographs may be worth a thousand words, but it's worthless if you don't have words to give you context.
• 4:00 The problem with photos without labels, dates, names, events, makes the photos lose their meaning for future generations.
• 4:38 AMADA Senior Care Commercial
• 5:08 What challenges do families face when preserving and managing family photos?
• 5:24 When you are inheriting things from your parents and your grandparents and their collection, the biggest challenge is that you get overwhelmed with the amount, and that's just gonna get worse with the digital.
• 5:35 We're now taking the entire amount of photos that were taken in the 19th century when photography was developed. We take that now in two minutes.
• 5:50 And then the other thing is just that challenge of the detective work of trying to figure out what's in there, who's in there. How does this relate to me?
• 6:37 It would be much nicer if the 6th generation, 100 years from now, had five photobooks that told the story of each generation in that previous hundred years. Because in 100 years from now, they'll have half a million to a million images.
• 7:18 The other challenge, is that technology changes. So your grandparents most likely had slides, possibly eight millimeter movies. Do you still have a movie projector?
• 8:40 Digital is actually more ephemeral than a printed photo. A digital image will die from mechanical failure on your hard drive, or accidental deletion or, by the service going out of business, or you hit the delete key on your computer by accident.
• 9:30 The Library of Congress used to say three copies. That was good photo management for years, especially with analog, you have three copies, two different media, and one off-site. Okay, well, with the digital age now, they're saying you need five copies.
• 9:55 Tips and best practices for professional photo management.
• 10:07 The first place to start is gathering everything together in one place. Start gathering everything together in one place. It's what we call the photo hub.
• 10:54 Another thing that Philip can do for clients, is he can go through and go, "Hey, here's what you have." And sorting and going, "Where did they come from?" Organizing all the photos.
• 11:40 You want to save photos in photo safe archival boxes because sunlight is actually the enemy of photographs.
• 12:40 Another best practice is avoiding the basement, garage, and attic. It doesn't have to be wet for mold and mildew to start affecting photographs. And then they become a health issue. And if mold or mildew start growing on them, save them by digitizing.
• 13:08 Photographs really need to live where you live, where it's temperature and humidity controlled.
• 13:24 You want the most important photos up visible, because when you go through your house and your kids and you see pictures of your family, pictures of your parents, grandparents, extended family, it's psychologically healthy and uplifting.
• 14:00 All sorts of different questions and questions that you might not expect are raised by photos. And they open up new conversations.
• 14:35 Creating lifebooks with photos.
• 15:36 The CLTC Commercial
• 16:06 Philip also shares the various ways he helps families manage their photos, from free online courses to hands-on coaching and full-service solutions.
• 17:23 Philip shares his contact website, www.PSGPhotoSolutions.com. and they can find my course on thegreatdiscovery.com/psgphotosolutions.
• 17:50 Philip shares advice: Use your photos to tell your stories and make sure they'll last for generations and have them out visible for viewing and conversing about.
• 18:40 Kelly and Philip agree to the importance of photos and say goodbye.

Transcript

Kelly Augspurger [00:00:02]:
Hey everyone, welcome to Steadfast Care Planning where we plan for care, to live well. I'm Kelly Augspurger, long-term care insurance specialist, and your guide. With me today is Philip Griffith, a professional photo manager and owner of PSG Photo Solutions. Welcome, Philip.

Philip Griffith [00:00:17]:
Thank you. Glad to be here.

Kelly Augspurger [00:00:19]:
I'm so glad you're here, too. Today we're going to be talking about preserving family memories through photo management. So can we jump right in, Philip?

Philip Griffith [00:00:27]:
Sure.

Kelly Augspurger [00:00:28]:
Okay. Well, before we dig into actually preserving those family memories through photos, which I know that's your expertise, Philip, I would love for you to briefly tell us a little bit about your family experience with caregiving and then what motivates you to preserve family memories, because I think that's really important into what you do. And also, obviously on my show, we talk a lot about aging and caregiving and those types of things, so I think it's really applicable. So please share with us.

Philip Griffith [00:00:56]:
Sure. Probably about 19 years ago, my mother-in-law moved in with us at 85. She lived downstairs. We were in Massachusetts. And then when she turned 90, we had a big party, and I was like, "You need to have a photographer come because you have a great grandchild who had just been born that year, and he needs to have a picture of you, your daughter, your grandson, and him."

Kelly Augspurger [00:01:27]:
Sweet. Yeah.

Philip Griffith [00:01:28]:
And she died four months later. We were really privileged to actually have her in our home, to be able to have her for dinner and those things so that my children could actually get to know her better. And we were able to do hospice in the home, which was really a privilege. And I was very impressed with hospice. And there were a lot of things that we found out in that five years that my wife had never known. And that's really sort of a lot of why we do what we do, especially for older adults, because the next generation needs to know the stories. So, for example, my wife's family always did these cookies at Christmas. They were sort of international, like Mexican wedding cookies and Danish ginger birds, and there were about 16 of them.

Philip Griffith [00:02:20]:
And so she decided, let me make a book of those recipes. And she wanted to get some history from her mother. So she asked, when did you start baking these? Because my wife thought that she had baked them with her mother's mother when her mother was a little girl.

Kelly Augspurger [00:02:36]:
Okay.

Philip Griffith [00:02:36]:
And she said, "Oh, we started about a year or two after you were born."

Kelly Augspurger [00:02:43]:
Different story.

Philip Griffith [00:02:44]:
Yes. And she also inherited her grandmother's student art portfolio. And she was going through that and noticed that there was a year that just didn't have much in it. And so she asked her mother, and she said, "Oh, that must have been the year mother almost died." So, without asking those questions, without looking at the...not just the photos, but the memorabilia and asking questions of that oldest living generation, there are stories that will die unless we capture them.

Kelly Augspurger [00:03:19]:
That's right. And how do we capture those, Philip?

Philip Griffith [00:03:22]:
With photos and with photobooks. One of the things that I really try to emphasize is that photographs may be worth a thousand words, but it's worthless if you don't have words to give you context. If you don't know who's in the picture, if you don't know where it was, or why it was taken, what was important about this moment? Unfortunately, I've seen far too many collections, family photo collections, just trashed because the next generation has no clue. And there are so many that they're just overwhelmed, and they're like, "I'm not gonna deal with it."

Kelly Augspurger [00:04:01]:
Right. Oh, been there, done that. Philip. I know when different grandparents have passed away and we've inherited photobooks, my parents have inherited photobooks, but there aren't names on them. You know, sometimes there's a year, but we don't know who's in this picture. And some of them are in black and white, too, which makes it even harder to make out different qualities of the person.

Kelly Augspurger [00:04:20]:
And so you don't even know the eye color. Maybe it was this person, maybe it wasn't. So, yeah. I mean, if you just have these photos but there aren't years, there aren't names, you don't know where it was...

Philip Griffith [00:04:32]:
Right.

Kelly Augspurger [00:04:32]:
It's not as meaningful.

Philip Griffith [00:04:34]:
No.

Kelly Augspurger [00:04:34]:
The Steadfast Care Planning podcast is sponsored by AMADA Senior Care. AMADA provides complimentary consultation with a senior care advisor to find the right care, from in-home caregiving to community care, as well as long-term care insurance claim advocacy, and unique support partnerships for financial advisors to address family transitions and generational retention. To learn more, visit: www.SteadfastWithAmada.com. Philip, what challenges do families face when preserving and managing family photos? I think particularly with the older generation's photos.

Philip Griffith [00:05:14]:
Yeah. When you are inheriting things from your parents and your grandparents and their collection, the biggest challenge is that you get overwhelmed with the amount, and that's just gonna get worse with the digital.

Kelly Augspurger [00:05:29]:
Yeah.

Philip Griffith [00:05:29]:
Cause we're now taking the entire amount of photos that were taken in the 19th century when photography was developed. We take that now in two minutes.

Kelly Augspurger [00:05:40]:
I believe it.

Philip Griffith [00:05:41]:
Every two minutes!

Kelly Augspurger [00:05:43]:
Yeah.

Philip Griffith [00:05:44]:
So you've got that overwhelm with so many. And then the other thing is just that challenge of the detective work of trying to figure out what's in there, who's in there. How does this relate to me? And that's one of the things that we really help clients with, is if they've done any genealogical work, if they have any family timeline, or history, that really helps to identify people. And it's not just your parents and your grandparents. Well, what about your great aunts and uncles, your cousins? They may have information that you don't. And so widening that net to find the information that people need and then doing something with it as actually telling your family story. It would be much nicer if the 6th generation, 100 years from now, had five photobooks that told the story of each generation in that previous hundred years. Because in 100 years from now, they'll have half a million to a million images scattered, not just albums and boxes, but across phones, computers, hard drives.

Philip Griffith [00:06:56]:
It'll be a chaos. And they won't do anything with it.

Kelly Augspurger [00:07:00]:
No, it'll just sit in the cloud, or whatever it is in 50-100 years, right? It'd probably be something completely different, but, yeah. This overwhelm of photos and videos. Right? Not just photos, but...and videos of, "Okay, what are we gonna do with these things?"

Philip Griffith [00:07:15]:
Well, that's the other challenge, is that technology changes. So your grandparents most likely had slides, possibly eight millimeter movies. Do you still have a movie projector?

Kelly Augspurger [00:07:27]:
No.

Philip Griffith [00:07:28]:
Then your parents had VHS tapes, right? Do you still have a player?

Kelly Augspurger [00:07:34]:
Right, no.

Philip Griffith [00:07:35]:
The technology changes. And so how we view things, how things are captured, how we view them's changing. And so that's another challenge that people face, bringing that older technology, that older analog, into the digital age. But on the other hand, everyone thinks, "Oh, well, we'll do it all digital, and we'll put it in the cloud." You'll never see it, you'll never look at it. And when my sister-in-law started to have dementia, early onset dementia, one of the things that we did was we put pictures of her family, her children, as they are today and growing up on a digital photo frame that would cycle through. And this is something that a lot of older adults can really enjoy because their kids can send them pictures via Wifi onto that frame so they can feel connected.

Philip Griffith [00:08:32]:
It's a way to get those digital images back into your life, because digital is actually more ephemeral than a printed photo. A printed photo will last 100 years with benign neglect. A digital image will die from mechanical failure on your hard drive, or accidental deletion or, by the service going out of business, or you hit the delete key on your computer by accident.

Kelly Augspurger [00:09:01]:
Right. And it's gone. Yeah, yeah.

Philip Griffith [00:09:02]:
And then it really is gone. I went through the X-ray at the airport, and I had an external hard-drive with pictures on it.

Kelly Augspurger [00:09:10]:
Okay.

Philip Griffith [00:09:10]:
When I went to look at those pictures, the X-ray had affected them.

Kelly Augspurger [00:09:15]:
Oh, no.

Philip Griffith [00:09:16]:
Now, fortunately, I always do, not one, not two, but three copies, plus on the cloud.

Kelly Augspurger [00:09:23]:
Oh, wow. Okay. That's security, Philip.

Philip Griffith [00:09:26]:
Well, yeah, the Library of Congress used to say three copies. That was good photo management for years, especially with analog, you have three copies, two different media, and one off-site. Okay, well, with the digital age now, they're saying you need five copies.

Kelly Augspurger [00:09:45]:
What? Oh, my goodness.

Philip Griffith [00:09:46]:
Well, because those digital bits and bytes degrade over time.

Kelly Augspurger [00:09:51]:
Yeah. So this is actually really some tips and best practices, right? For how people can preserve and really manage their photos is by having multiple copies. I think that's probably a great place to start, right?

Philip Griffith [00:10:02]:
Absolutely. And actually, the first place to start is gathering everything together in one place. Most people don't know what they have until someone dies. It's much better to say, "Hey, grandma, grandpa, let's gather all your photos together. Do you have slides? Do you have movies?

Philip Griffith [00:10:20]:
What all memorabilia is important to you? What are the stories that you want to pass down to us?" And start gathering everything together in one place. It's what we call the photo hub. And I've found things as far back as the civil war.

Kelly Augspurger [00:10:38]:
Oh, my goodness.

Philip Griffith [00:10:39]:
Here in central Ohio, I've had clients that have ambrotypes, which are photographs that were printed on glass.

Kelly Augspurger [00:10:46]:
Wow.

Philip Griffith [00:10:47]:
And they're pretty old.

Kelly Augspurger [00:10:48]:
Yeah.

Philip Griffith [00:10:49]:
So they're pre civil war, and you just don't know what treasures are hiding in this collection until you start to unearth them and look through the collection. So that's sort of the place to start. And, yeah, it does feel overwhelming because you're going, we've got 15 boxes, and there's so many. Yeah, but do a little bit at a time. And that's another thing that we do for clients, is we can go through and go, "Hey, here's what you have." And sorting and going, "Where did they come from? Is this your grandparents on your father's side, on your mother's side? Which part of the family is this collection coming from?" So that's sort of the first thing to do.

Kelly Augspurger [00:11:32]:
Okay, great. What are some other tips and best practices?

Philip Griffith [00:11:35]:
So the other thing is, especially for these older photos and memorabilia, you want to save them in photo safe archival boxes because sunlight is actually the enemy of photographs.

Kelly Augspurger [00:11:50]:
Okay.

Philip Griffith [00:11:50]:
And so if you have that photograph from the civil war, or even of your great great grandparent, grandfather, or grandmother, and you only have one copy, have it digitized, do another print that you display, but keep that original in an archival sleeve, in an archival box. And when I say archival, going to Michaels or Hobby Lobby, and what they say is archival, doesn't cut it.

Kelly Augspurger [00:12:17]:
Okay.

Philip Griffith [00:12:18]:
It actually has to have a P.A.T. test, photographic activity test.

Kelly Augspurger [00:12:23]:
Okay. So a shoe box is not gonna cut it, is what you're saying, Philip, correct? Okay, so in my parent's basement, all the shoe boxes and the plastic containers, that's not archival is what you're saying?

Philip Griffith [00:12:34]:
Correct. And actually, you just hit on another one of those things, the basement. It doesn't have to be wet for mold and mildew to start affecting photographs.

Kelly Augspurger [00:12:44]:
Okay.

Philip Griffith [00:12:44]:
And then they become a health issue. And if mold or mildew start growing on them, we can save them by digitizing and doing some photo correction, digital photo correction. But then you've lost that original because you don't want that in your home.

Kelly Augspurger [00:12:59]:
Right, you want to toss it.

Philip Griffith [00:13:00]:
Get them out of the basement, get them out of the attic, get them out of the garage. Photographs really need to live where you live, where it's temperature and humidity controlled.

Kelly Augspurger [00:13:09]:
Okay. But yet, we don't want them in sunlight?

Philip Griffith [00:13:12]:
Correct. We don't want them in direct sunlight. But you also want them up visible, the most important ones up visible, because when you go through your house and your kids and you see pictures of your family, pictures of your parents, grandparents, extended family, it's like making a deposit into your bank, your emotional bank, every day. You don't realize it, but kids who see them themselves in pictures in the home, their sense of identity, their sense of being loved and understanding that I'm part of this family. And there's context that gets communicated subconsciously every day, every time you walk past that picture.

Kelly Augspurger [00:13:55]:
Yeah.

Philip Griffith [00:13:56]:
And they also open opportunities for conversations.

Kelly Augspurger [00:13:59]:
Sure.

Philip Griffith [00:14:00]:
When you open that photo album and start looking through, you start asking questions of your parents or grandparents, or your kids say, "Mom, that was you when you were my age?" All sorts of different questions and questions that you might not expect.

Kelly Augspurger [00:14:16]:
Yeah.

Philip Griffith [00:14:17]:
So, for example, both my boys were adopted, and this is really why I got into this, because I made their lifebooks, which is their story from birth through adoption and then being part of our family. And so I was sitting reading my youngest son's lifebook, and my older son was looking over my shoulder, and we got to the point where in the book where he talked about his adoption, my older son looked at me and said, "You adopted him?" I'm going, "Yeah, just like we adopted you." And then he's like...I can see the wheels turning in his mind...and he says, "Oh, you mean like Moses?" I'm going, I would never have thought that he would make that connection.

Kelly Augspurger [00:15:02]:
Right, right.

Philip Griffith [00:15:03]:
And I know relationships are serious when now my boys bring the girlfriend over, and the lifebook comes off the shelf.

Kelly Augspurger [00:15:11]:
Okay.

Philip Griffith [00:15:12]:
Because that's a way for them to share, "Here's who I am."

Kelly Augspurger [00:15:15]:
Yeah. Oh, that's really sweet. Yeah. It really tells so many stories, right? Especially if it goes back years. It's not just one particular year, but you see kind of the evolution over time, how the person grew and changed and more people added to the family. Really precious. The Steadfast Care Planning podcast is sponsored by the Certification for Long-Term Care, CLTC, an in-depth training program that gives financial advisors the education and tools they need to discuss extended care planning with their clients.

Kelly Augspurger [00:15:45]:
Look for the CLTC designation when choosing an advisor. If you're looking to become a CLTC, enroll in their masterclass and enter "Kelly" in the coupon code field for $200 off. All right, Philip, now give us some insight into how you specifically help families manage their photos and create some of these books that you've talked about.

Philip Griffith [00:16:06]:
Sure. So we have 3 different ways that we help people. I just did a free online course, and I'm hoping to do more courses so that if you want to do it yourself, you can do those courses and learn best practices and sort of what steps you need to take. The other is coaching some people, they need help over that hump. You know, they've come to a point and they're like, "Okay, how do I do this?" Or they don't feel comfortable doing one part of the process themselves.

Kelly Augspurger [00:16:39]:
Okay.

Philip Griffith [00:16:39]:
We can do that. And then for a lot of people, they realize, "I just don't have time. And for me to take the time, if I tried to, I'm never going to do it." So we actually take everything and do it all for you.

Kelly Augspurger [00:16:53]:
Okay.

Philip Griffith [00:16:53]:
And part of that is because we have the technology, we've got the software, and we've got the expertise. I mean, we've been doing this. We've been in business for 13 years, but I've been doing this photo management work for almost 20 now.

Kelly Augspurger [00:17:08]:
Okay, great. So a variety of different ways that you can serve people and help and coach hands on, or not as hands on, even through your course. So, Philip, where would people find more information about you and how you help people?

Philip Griffith [00:17:21]:
That would be on my website, www.PSGPhotoSolutions.com. and they can find my course on thegreatdiscovery.com/psgphotosolutions. Okay, then they would need to search under free courses for probably my name would be the easiest way for it to come up, especially once I start adding courses.

Kelly Augspurger [00:17:42]:
Great. And then what about any final advice how people can plan for care and aging to live well?

Philip Griffith [00:17:49]:
Use your photos to tell your stories and make sure they'll last for generations and have them out visible, especially the older you get. I think it's important to remember because those photos bring back those memories of your loved ones and the places and events that were important to you, and that is going to enrich your life as we grow older.

Kelly Augspurger [00:18:14]:
Love that. Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. I love taking photos. I love looking back through old photos, whether it's on my phone or at a family member's house. I think it definitely brings the warm and fuzzies and brings back some of those memories depending on what year it was and what time of life. But, and I know our children love to look through old photos, too, and it does...it's definitely a way to connect in a different way and to ask questions and for them to learn more about their family history.

Kelly Augspurger [00:18:42]:
So. Yeah, that's great.

Philip Griffith [00:18:44]:
Actually, that's an important point, too, is them learning about your family history will help them be more resilient.

Kelly Augspurger [00:18:52]:
I love that. Yeah, great. We could use some more resilience in our world, couldn't we? Yeah, I think we could. Well, Philip, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate learning more about photo management and how we can really help families all across the world be able to really capture and remember those memories that they have with their loved ones. So really appreciate it. Have a great day. Thanks.