When someone dies, the family photo album often comes off the shelf. A slideshow at the funeral, memorial service or reception is a common way to share a life story, and it usually falls to one or two people to pull it together quickly, while they are grieving. This guide is meant to make that job lighter: how to gather pictures, how to choose the ones that tell the story, how to digitize old prints without damaging them, and how to make sure the collection you build is kept for the family afterward.
Start by asking a few practical questions
Before you open a single album, find out the basics from whoever is organizing the service, whether that is a funeral home, a place of worship or a family member:
- How long is the slot? The length of the show decides how many photos you need far more than how many photos exist.
- What equipment will play it? Ask what file type, screen and connection they use, and whether you should bring a USB drive, a laptop or a link. Ask whether they can test it before the day.
- Is music allowed, and who supplies it? Some venues have rules or licensing arrangements for music; check rather than assume.
- Who has the final say on content? Agreeing early on who signs off avoids hurt feelings later.
Gather widely, then narrow
Ask relatives and friends to send pictures, and give them a clear deadline and one place to send them (a shared folder or a single email address). People often have photos the immediate family has never seen: a work party, a school reunion, a fishing trip.
Then sort in passes rather than trying to pick the "best" photos straight away:
- Sort by period of life. Childhood, young adulthood, marriage and family, career, later years, grandchildren. Even rough piles make gaps obvious.
- Pick the anchors. In each period, choose one or two photos that most people would recognize as "them." These carry the show.
- Add the story photos. Pictures of the person doing what they loved, with the people who mattered, in the places they belonged.
- Cut duplicates. If there are five photos from the same afternoon, keep the one where the person is clearest.
What makes a photo work on a big screen
A photo that looks lovely in an album can disappear when it is projected across a room. When choosing between similar pictures, favor:
- The person's face, clearly visible. Group shots are wonderful, but in a crowded photo it can be hard to find the person being remembered.
- Sharpness over sentiment, when you have a choice. A blurry photo of an important day can stay if there is no other; otherwise pick the sharper one.
- A mix of orientations. Many screens are wide; a run of tall portrait-orientation photos will show with large black bars on either side.
- Variety. Alternate close-ups with wider scenes, posed portraits with candid moments, and color with black-and-white.
Be thoughtful about who appears
A memorial is shared by many people. Consider leaving out photos that might upset someone, such as pictures of a former spouse when the current family would find it painful, images from the last stages of an illness, or anything the person themselves would have disliked. When in doubt, ask the person who has the final say.
Digitizing old prints without harming them
Most slideshow software works from digital files, so old prints need to be scanned or photographed. A few habits protect the originals:
- Work on a clean, dry table, away from food and drinks, and handle prints by their edges with clean, dry hands.
- Clean the scanner glass before you start. The Library of Congress notes that a scanner captures the item as it is, so dirt or particles on the scanner or the original can end up in the scan.
- Choose a sensible resolution. The Library of Congress says documents should generally be scanned at 300 dpi, and photographs you intend to enlarge to 8 x 10 inches or greater can be scanned at 400 or 600 dpi. Anything above 600 may be unnecessary.
- Do not force photos out of albums. If prints are stuck to album pages, scan or photograph them in place rather than peeling them, which risks tearing the image.
- Return each original to where it came from as soon as it is scanned, and keep track of whose photo is whose. Families lend precious prints, and they should come back in the same condition.
Name and organize files as you go
The Library of Congress recommends descriptive file names, and says a "yyyymmdd" date at the start of the name helps, for example 19620815-wedding.jpg. For a slideshow, a simple variation works well: start each file name with a sequence number and a short description, such as 012-1975-fishing-with-dad.jpg. Sorting by file name then gives you the running order, and the description becomes the start of a family record.
Keep one master folder for all the scans and a separate folder for the slideshow selection, so that editing the show never deletes an original scan.
After the service: keep the collection
The work of gathering a lifetime of photos rarely happens twice, so treat the slideshow folder as the beginning of a family archive:
- Make at least two copies. The Library of Congress advises making at least two copies of a collection, on separate media, stored in different locations as far apart as practical. One copy can stay on a computer; others can go on an external drive or online storage.
- Add names while people remember. At the reception or afterward, relatives can often identify faces that nobody will be able to name in twenty years. Write them down in the file name or a simple text file alongside the photos.
- Share the folder with the family so that everyone can download the scans.
- Check the copies periodically. Reopen files occasionally to make sure they can still be opened, and copy them to new media when needed.
- Store the original prints carefully. The Library of Congress advises against attics and basements and recommends a cool, dry, stable place, with photographs in protective folders or sleeves made from photo-safe materials.
A final word
There is no correct number of photos and no single right way to tell someone's story. If you are short on time, a small set of well-chosen pictures, shown in the order of a life, will mean more to the people in the room than a long show assembled in a rush. Ask for help with the scanning and sorting, and let others share the load.
Sources
- Library of Congress, "Scanning Your Personal Collections" (Personal Digital Archiving series): https://www.digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/documents/scanning_collections.pdf
- Library of Congress, "Personal Archiving: Digital Photographs": https://digitalpreservation.gov/personalarchiving/photos.html
- Library of Congress, "Care, Handling, and Storage of Photographs": https://www.loc.gov/preservation/care/photo.html