Polaroid pictures are probably tucked somewhere in your twentieth-century photo collection.

The Polaroid Corporation changed photography forever when Edwin Land introduced the first commercial instant camera in 1948. Those earliest instant pictures were black-and-white, and part of the appeal was the pure magic of seeing the image appear while you watched. Take a picture, wait a little while, and voilà—there was your photograph.

When I was a kid, I had a Polaroid Swinger. It’s still one of the treasures in my camera collection. You could carry it on your wrist and snap pictures of your friends wherever you went. To develop the image, you applied a chemical coating to the surface and waited for the magic to happen. Not surprisingly, many of those pictures have faded away over time.

Polaroids were wildly popular. You didn’t have to send film away and wait days—or weeks—only to discover you’d taken a whole roll of blurry vacation pictures. With an instant camera, you could retake the image right then and there.

It wasn’t just families who loved Polaroids. Professional photographers used them to test lighting setups, and police departments relied on them for documentation. Instant photography changed the way people worked.

Then came the iconic SX-70 in 1972. Those white-bordered pictures are instantly recognizable even today.

Unlike the earlier peel-apart prints, no chemical application was required. When the picture ejected through the rollers, the chemicals inside the film activated automatically. Wait a minute or two, and there was your image.

Interestingly, Polaroid didn’t make most of its profit from the cameras. The real money was in the film.

Like snapshots, these square instant prints captured candid moments. Family celebrations, vacations, goofy faces, kids clowning for the camera—Polaroids documented everyday life in a wonderfully spontaneous way.

Preservation Problems

But there was one problem: permanence.

Polaroid knew these images had preservation issues. Early black-and-white prints tended to fade. SX-70 images could crack, discolor, and lose detail. In the 1980s, the company even offered a copy service. You could mail your Polaroids to them and receive print copies in return.

Eventually, popularity declined. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, 35mm photography had become cheaper and more convenient. One-hour photo labs offered fast turnaround and duplicate prints. Then digital photography arrived—and that changed everything.

Around 2010, instant photography experienced a nostalgic revival. After all, you can’t hold a digital image in your hand the same way you can a print. Suddenly, smaller instant cameras started appearing at weddings, parties, and celebrations as a way to capture the feeling of an event in real time.

Today, you can still buy modern “Polaroid-style” cameras. In my opinion, the image quality isn’t quite as good as the originals. The pictures can look soft or fuzzy. But younger generations love the nostalgic look and the tactile experience of holding a physical photograph.

One thing Polaroids have going for them?
You could write directly on that white border.

I have a lot of Polaroid prints in my own collection. My husband worked for Polaroid for several years and often brought home test cameras. Our children especially loved one model that could record and play back a message like, “Say cheese!”

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Polaroids because I rediscovered a cache of them while organizing photographs. My first thought was, “I’m never going to find an album for these.”

A quick Google search proved me wrong.

There are albums specifically made for instant prints, and honestly, they’re pretty handy. Since the pictures themselves are plastic-coated, I’m not overly concerned about storing them in plastic pages. The albums I found at B&H Photo Video fit standard 600, i-Type, SX-70, and Polaroid Go film sizes, as well as 2″ x 3″ ZINK prints. (No affiliate link—just sharing what I found.)

Take my advice:
Dig through all your photo boxes before ordering an album.

While writing this article, I discovered another cache of instant pictures. I immediately realized I should have bought the larger album.

Looking through those photographs has been a true blast from the past. Sharing them with family and friends brings back the exact moments we captured. That’s the real magic of photography.

What I’m Doing With My Polaroid Pictures

• Scanning them at 600 dpi
• Sharing the scans with family and friends pictured in them
• Placing the originals in albums
• Uploading scans to my Forever.com account
• Adding metadata: names, approximate dates, locations, and “Polaroid” as a keyword so I can instantly locate them later

Photo Detective Tip

Don’t overlook modern snapshots in your family archive. Today’s casual pictures are tomorrow’s family history. Label them while you still remember the names, places, and stories behind them.

The post Polaroid Memories: Preserving Instant Photos From the Past appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

This week Maureen Taylor, the Photo Detective, is joined by Ariel Servadio, from Gaylord Archival, who helps museums and conservation professionals preserve our cultural heritage. Ariel developed YourStory (with Ronda Buck, Product Manager) a collection of the same archival-quality materials professionals use to make it simple for genealogists to preserve their own family history.

Save 25% on Gaylord products with coupon code PD25

Save $10 on a Single Photo Consult on MaureenTaylor.com with coupon code podcast

Related Episodes:

Episode 109: Portable Photo Preservation with Shotbox

Episode 103: Collect, Preserve and Share with Collectionaire

Links:

• YourStory by Gaylord Archival
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Ariel Servadio has been working in the preservation industry for over 10 years for Gaylord Archival, helping museums, archives, and conservation professionals to preserve our cultural heritage. She developed YourStory, a collection of the same archival-quality materials that professionals use, to make it simple for genealogists to preserve their own family history to share with future generations. She has exhibited and presented at NERGC, FGS, and NYG&B conferences.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 162: Preserving Your Life with Gaylord Archival appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

This week Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is joined by Amberly Russell, the Preservations Services Manager for the Permanent Legacy Foundation. Permanent is a platform dedicated to allowing individual users to preserve their photos, just as a museum would, through a digital platform. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 95: How to Save Your Family Archive with Permanent.org

Episode 92: What You Need to Know About Metadata with Christopher Desmond of MemoryWeb.me

Links:

• Permanent.org
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About My Guest:

Amberly Russell is a Texas-based archivist and is currently the Preservation Services Manager for Permanent Legacy Foundation.

Amberly brings her lifelong passion as a photographer, videographer, and archivist to her work with clients. She is a United States Army Veteran who earned her Master of Science in Information Studies, Libraries,and Archives from The University of Texas at Austin. Amberly loves hiking, listening to live music, and honing her photography skills in and around Austin, TX.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 161: Creating a Digital Archive with Permanent.org appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is back with her monthly “Ask Maureen” series in which she answers questions submitted by her followers about photos and photo-related items.

In this month’s episode, Maureen tackles:

• How to donate material to an archive
• Should you keep the folios that come with photos
• Researching a photo mystery from Moldavia
• … and more!

Give the episode a listen and find out the answers to these questions.

Related Episodes:

Episode 156 Ask Maureen November 2021

Episode 152: Ask Maureen October 2021

Links:

• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London, and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles, and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com,

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 160: Ask Maureen December 2021 Edition appeared first on Maureen Taylor.

Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, is back with her monthly “Ask Maureen” series in which she answers questions submitted by her followers about photos and photo-related items.

In this month’s episode, Maureen tackles:

• How to tell if a painting frame is old, new, or important
• How to store and preserve glass slides
• How to scan in images with low resolution
• … and more!

Give the episode a listen and find out the answers to these questions. Join Maureen on her Facebook at the end of every month to submit your questions and have them answered. 

Related Episodes:

Episode 147: Ask Maureen September 2021

Episode 143: Ask Maureen August 2021

Links:

• Modern Day Antique
• How to Tell If a Frame is an Antique
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Watch my YouTube Channel.
• Like the Photo Detective Facebook Page so you get notified of my Facebook Live videos.
• Need help organizing your photos? Check out the Essential Photo Organizing Video Course.
• Need help identifying family photos? Check out the Identifying Family Photographs Online Course.
• Have a photo you need help identifying? Sign up for photo consultation.

About Maureen Taylor:

Maureen is a frequent keynote speaker on photo identification, photograph preservation, and family history at historical and genealogical societies, museums, conferences, libraries, and other organizations across the U.S., London, and Canada.  She’s the author of several books and hundreds of articles and her television appearances include The View and The Today Show (where she researched and presented a complete family tree for host Meredith Vieira).  She’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, The Boston Globe, Martha Stewart Living, Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel, American Spirit, and The New York Times. Maureen was recently a spokesperson and photograph expert for MyHeritage.com, an internationally known family history website, and also writes guidebooks, scholarly articles, and online columns for such media as Smithsonian.com. Learn more at Maureentaylor.com,

Did you enjoy this episode? Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

The post Episode 156: Ask Maureen November 2021 Edition appeared first on Maureen Taylor.