Water Damaged Photos

This is my photo-washing station. Luckily since I have LOTS of photos to wash and dry, I have great scenery for my work -- one of Russ's aluminum and plexiglass paintings that hangs in our group room as a partition to hide to all the snacks in the kitchen behind.

Every day I do another batch and lay them out on tables to dry. Last week, someone on the QA list suggested I look up how to save wet photos on the internet (thanks very much!) and I found this website. At the time, I was laying on the sofa, but this site reinforced the urgency of the situation, so I jumped back to work. I wish I had read these ideas earlier, but everything still seems to be working although it's been over a week. As suggested I did freeze one box of lower-priority photos because there's just so darn many of them, and my back is killing me!

There are too many to take to a photo shop, especially because all the shops here have been without power for a week and are behind on their other jobs. I also read another site that says that now preservatives have been washed off the photos, so they will probably fade more quickly. We have been planning to scan them when dry. Since all of these projects happened in the ancient pre-digital-camera days, it would be nice to have them on computer. But there's too many, so I'm definitely using my editing trash can.

This photo was taken before the green machines arrived. Now that they're here, the photos are drying faster but it's also a lot messier. There are cords and tubes on the floor everywhere, a lot more dust in the air, and the green machines keep blowing circuits. Yesterday the DSL was down most of the day. I was feeling a bit lonely with no email again, but it was nice to get home and read so many of your nice posts. It really cheered me up -- thanks!