At Home with Tech

I usually show off family photos at home through my digital screens. (I haven’t bought photo paper in years.) The pictures glow on my little Nixplay digital frames and on my family room screen via my Apple TV interface. For years, I’ve enjoyed the flexibility to rotate countless images through these little memory portals.

What I’ve mostly ignored is the art of analog photo framing where you make a print, place it in a wooden frame and hang it on your wall. That’s so 1925. Plus, you ruin your walls in the process with all those little nail holes.

Well, unless you want to live in a sterile environment with empty walls, you have to accept some damage across the years and include a little patch and paint planning for your home.

So, I recently embarked on a journey to return to this old-school approach and frame more photos to hang.

My goal was to create a memory wall/family history gallery featuring photos from past generations in our hallway.

The Best Archival Photos have Visual Markers
I turned to the collection of pictures from my parents’ old photo albums, many of which I had already digitized. So, I was off to a great start, but I was quickly disappointed with what I found.

Sure, my parents took family photos, but a lot of them simply weren’t that great. Those Kodak moments were turned into soft, mediocre images captured by inferior 20th century consumer tech. (I’m admittedly spoiled by today’s smartphone photography magic.)

More importantly, so many of these images couldn’t stand on their own and reflect a story. The backgrounds were simply too vague.

Visual markers are the key to unlocking the story in any photo. Without them, a photo’s archival value rarely lasts beyond one generation. (Food for thought as you practice your own photography.)

Going back a generation to my grandparents, I had fewer pictures to work with. That said, I could tell my paternal grandmother really enjoyed being photographed. 

I never met her, but her vibrant personality glowed in all the photos she’s featured in.

I have just a couple of pictures of my great grandparents, and that’s it.

Other Factors to Consider
Once you select the best photos to work with, then you’ve got to figure out how they should go together. And that can be much harder than you’d think.

How you position archival family pictures can totally affect the story you want to tell. This is an entirely different skill set than I’m used to. (Remember, I just rotate pictures in digital frames.)

Plus, I was overwhelmed by the challenge to properly position a collage of photo frames on my wall and make it look organized and well designed (as opposed to a mess).

And then finally, the idea of puncturing my wall with lots of little nails almost pushed me over the edge towards inaction.

Display a Story in Groups of Four Photos
To help reduce my stress and solve for these complexities, I decided to make my photo frames do more of the work. I purchased wall-mountable frames that housed four 5″ x 7” photos each. (I picked up a few 25” x 10” frames from Target.) 

This strategy reduced my clutter concerns by 75% right there.

And it also created a structure for how I would organize my photos. Each group of four pictures needed to represent its own story.

Suddenly, my project became much easier.

• One group showcased portraits of three generations on my father’s side as well as my maternal grandparents.
• Another group featured my parents over the years.

Easy, right?

The only functional limitation to this design was I needed to group photos by orientation: portrait or landscape.

Still, I was able to make it work.

A Photo Collection Reflects a Larger Family Narrative
I’m happy to report the grand opening of Barrett’s family history gallery
(7am-6pm weekdays and 9am-1pm on weekends). 

But seriously, it feels great to have a few photos on our wall that display my family’s story. Previously, I’ve had some of these individually framed on shelves throughout our house. But they were effectively hidden from daily view. 

Plus, I like that our son can see this new collection. He knew my dad (who passed in 2022), but he never met my mom.

Yes, there’s more work to do… There’s a whole other family history to reflect on our walls. That comes next.

Simple and Effective Design
How ironic. What’s old is new again. So obvious… yet still requiring me to (re)discover these mini ‘aha’ moments.

Until the day comes when I upgrade my hallway to wall-to-wall digital screens, relying on old-school frames with four photos each is my DIY photo gallery solution.

I’m keeping it simple.