Hi! 👋
Memories May Vary is a small (but passionate!) family run business based in South Yorkshire.
We digitise and organise prints, negatives and slides; creating secure physical and digital archives of your photographs, ready for you and future generations to enjoy!
Gareth & Caroline
A lot of people say the first thing they would want to rescue from a 🔥 would be their photographs.
Photographs over time often fade, get damaged or lost... the sooner you decide to have your photographs brought into the digital age the sooner you can rest easy that they will be safe for many years to come.
Our very first project was digitising Caroline's family photo albums. We wanted to downsize shoe boxes and albums. We found a lot of benefits from digitising:
• Making copies of the digital collection for her parents and both of her sisters.
• The ability to easily share memories with cousins and family across the world.
• Creating artwork for our home.
• Ordering large prints for Caroline's sister's 40th birthday party.
• Making custom birthday cards.
• Sharing funny photos on social media.
• Opening the door to editing the photographs.
• Spending time looking at the photographs, many for the first time.
• Freeing up quite a bit of physical space.
• Protecting her family's photographic legacy for the future.
One of the absolute highlights of bringing an analog collection of photographs into the digital era, is the ability to 👀 them easily, you can even have them all on the device in your pocket!
We transform dusty, untouched boxes into cherished archives that you can use!
A photographic archive
is an organised collection of photographs.
We create both a digital archive and a physical archive for you, their purpose is to safely preserve your photographs for the future.
Your new digital archive
Photographs are organised into folders by identifiable events. We can also organise folders by key people.
As standard we supply two high-speed USB 3.0 thumb drives - you have a backup of your digital collection straight from the get-go.
We provide easy to follow steps on how to transfer your new digital files onto your devices.
Your new physical archive
Your prints, negatives and slides will be orangised and labelled by type and size, making it easier to find a specific group of physical photographs in the future.
We pride ourselves in organising disorganised jumbles of memories. We only use premium professional storage for your physical media designed specifically for long term photographic archiving.
From our own family archives:
Negatives
Slides
Prints
Prices are based on a combination of:
• Digitisation fee
25p / loose print / slide / negative (individual not strip)
• £45 / hour fee
Photo organisation, photo retouching (if requested)
• Archival storage products
• Collection and delivery
To give you the best value, all prices are quoted based on individual needs. We give clear estimates throughout your project, your final invoice will have an itemised breakdown.
✍️ The journey begins with filling in our virtual quotation below.
📞 We then follow up with a video call to hear more about your needs!
✉️ An itemised estimated quotation and detailed next steps are sent to you via email.
📦 We send you recyclable containers to safely place your collection, we arrange hassle free named day collection through UPS.
📋 On receiving your collection, we take an inventory and finalise your quotation before we commence sorting, organising and digitisation.
🏷 A second optional virtual call can be arranged if you would like us to tag any key people or specific events in the digital archive.
😁 Safe return of your new and improved physical/digital archives!
Telling us some details about your collection helps us understand if we are a good fit for your needs.
If you want to get in touch about any specific needs or further info, please email us hello@memoriesmayvary.co.uk
Some tips for counting your collection...
1" of stacked prints is around 100 photographs.
1" of stacked slides is around 20 slides.
Thank you for contacting us! We will be in touch by email within 24 hours with an estimated price. Memories May Vary
Quality
We use professional level cameras for digitisation, this provides the exceptional quality scans we take so much pride in. We recently upgraded from traditional flatbed scanners used by many scanning services, as they are not as high quality and risk damaging the original prints slides or film.
Our scan resolution is 14 megapixels which allows for a perfect combination of manageable file sizes and high quality prints should you wish re-print any of your photographs (up to a 20"x30" print).
The physical archive storage materials are made of the finest, lignin-free/acid-free tan board, they offer protection from damaging UV light, they have metal reinforced edges for extra stacking strength and contain no adhesives to dry out or off-gas. All storage materials are PAT passed (ANSI ISO 18916).
Care & Attention
We use gloves at all times when handling your photographs, the natural oils even on clean hands can negatively impact the long term condition of photographs. As we scan using a camera digitising method, nothing ever passes through a machine which means your photographs are safe.
We use a special tool to remove dust from all physical media before scanning. To ensure our scans are of the highest quality we manually inspect all images and digitally remove any dust particles from all faces.
As standard we offer auto colour correction through Adobe Lightroom, the industry leading software for this type of editing.
Privacy
We believe in privacy. None of the photographs that we handle and digitise will be shared with anyone else without your written consent. We delete all files on the safe receipt of your archives.
Environment
As a company we care about our environmental impact. We try to avoid the use of plastic wherever possible. All of our packaging is cardboard based and recyclable.
Memories May Vary digitised my father’s collection of around 5,000 slides after he passed. To see these memories and to share them easily with the rest of the family really meant the world to us. Thank you again for all your hard work and dedication Gareth and Caroline. Michael
Hi Gareth,
Thanks for scanning the slides, great job! Really glad everyone can share the enjoyment of the slides that lockdown actually unlocked. There's something to be said for colour slides given the number of photos that have been swallowed by redundant cell phones and digital cameras with dead batteries!
Best regards, Denis
