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Can someone please do it for me?

3/9/2016

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Your old print photographs hold part of your family’s history and memories. Quite often, you only have one original print of each moment that is gradually taking up dust in a shoe-box and that no one is able to enjoy or share.
A client recently came to me a year after losing her grandfather. She had started looking for family pictures and was startled to discover that she only had a few hundred prints.
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Her uncle and aunts who each lived in different countries in Europe and America had inherited a few pictures as well. Their photographic heritage had been scattered among family members. The photos she had were starting to fade away along with the captions that her grandfather had thoughtfully written on the back.
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She could hardly identify the people in some of the prints and her mother couldn’t jog her memory either. Some photos were tearing and fading away. The memories left behind by her grandfather could disappear if she didn't consolidate their photographic heritage. Scanning the photos would help her share them with the rest of the family and perhaps identify those she could not recognize. It will allow her to have backup copies of all the photos and to restore the prints that are deteriorating. But most importantly, it will strengthen her family history.

Today thanks to scanning, you can create second copies of your precious prints and safeguard your entire collection.
Scanning print photos take a tremendous amount of time and effort to do. It requires a specialized know-how in digital archiving and proper scanning techniques and tools. What should be an enjoyable trip down memory lane could turn into a bit of a chore.

You can always opt to send them to the nearest copy center and have them scanned for a cheap pricing package. They will most probably give you an unorganized folder filled with misnamed photos that aren’t scanned according to preservation standards. The result will be quite as messy as that shoe-box you wanted to get sorted.

Having your print photos scanned is not a luxury, it’s a necessary step if you want to safeguard and protect your photos. So why not let us do the tedious but necessary work while you sit back and relax?

As Professional Photo Organizers, we have a strong passion for organizing and simplifying your photo collections. With years of training behind us, we’ve mastered the proper scanning techniques that allow us to render high-quality scans of print photographs. We’ve also developed a proper file naming method to name and tag each scanned picture with all the information that you will need to retrieve these photographs.

Scanning your photo and slide collection offers several valuable benefits:
  • Protect your photo prints and slides:
By having a digital archive of your originals, you will feel relieved to have another copy of each and to know that you can reprint scanned images at any time.
  • Restore them back to their former beauty:
All photo prints fade over time and images get washed out. Slides and negatives decay. Loose photos get scratched, bent, or ripped through years of mishandling. Professional tools such as Photoshop can reverse the years of decay and damage in your originals and make them look as clear and vibrant as the day they were taken.
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  • Share them with family and friends:
If you’re hoarding one or more shoe-box of family photos, then it is your duty as the unofficial family archivist, to take the initiative to get those photos scanned, organized and backed-up into several copies that you can share with your family members.
  • Get creative with your photos:
Once your photos are properly scanned, we can help you create photo books, video slideshows, and fine art prints to tell the stories of your best moments.

Memories are meant to be shared with loved ones so preserve precious images of your family history by turning them digital so you can pass them on to future generations.
Book your free consultation session with us, and start preserving a lifetime of memories.

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Things we lost in the fire*

10/7/2015

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What are we left with from traumatic experiences such as war? What do we retain from these events? Memories which are more or less clear, feelings which are more or less strong, anecdotes which are more or less blurred, but mainly obscure areas and… stories of loss.
Some tragic experiences will never reach us and will remain unspoken, buried. We will never be able to witness their existence, but only presume that they are there, yet missing.
 
The Save Your Photos Alliance has launched an annual Save Your Photo Day on September 25; A day that launches a series of talks, activities and workshops prepared by photo caretakers to raise awareness about the importance of safeguarding your photos and treasured memorabilia before disaster or accidents occur. This is an event addressed to those who appreciate that every life is a story worth preserving and sharing.
 
At forget-me-not, we are committed on this occasion to contribute to this awareness campaign. To celebrate the Save Your Photo Day, we’re sharing a Story of Loss. Maha generously shared with us her experience of loss and photographs. We hope, through this story, to deliver a message on the importance of photos, their role as witness to everyday memories of everyday people and the historical importance of collecting and preserving those memories, those stories, which will otherwise disappear forever.
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This is the story of Maha’s loss; the loss of her family home in Hadath during the civil war in Lebanon and the loss of her family’s memories when their photographs burned during that tragic night in 1976.
 
Fouad and Siham got married in 1960. “My father is from Hadath,” his daughter Maha explains to us, “so all of my aunts and uncles were living in that neighborhood. He was a civil engineer and decided to build his house from the ground up in this same area”.
 
The newlyweds moved into their new home a few months after their wedding. Siham was a natural born decorator and with the help of her husband, she decorated every single room in this house with love and attention. “Each object in the house was specifically chosen to serve its purpose and had its own story,” Maha says, “they used to save money in order to buy antique objects, furniture, and art pieces. When a couple starts their married life together, they pour all of their heart into the very foundation of the first house they live in”.
 
The house witnessed the happiest times of this young couple's lives. Their three children were born there: Nadia in 1961, Adel in 1962 and Maha in 1971. They took their first steps there and enjoyed the simple pleasures of childhood surrounded by their loved ones.

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Siham was a generous host who wouldn't miss an occasion to throw a party and snap pictures of everyone she'd gathered in her garden. “The house witnessed all of our birthdays from 1960 to 1975, every anniversary, every Christmas and Easter.”
Until the civil war started in 1975.

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Early on at the outbreak of the war, they took refuge in a Lebanese village in the mountains, like many other Beirutis who escaped the daily violence of the city. Pretty soon however, they realized that their house might be threatened. Burglars were ravaging empty houses and filling up their trucks, cars and pockets with whatever they could find. So Fouad went back to the house and packed up in a moving truck a few valuable items, mostly big pieces of furniture. A few days later, militia men broke into the house, stole whatever they could find and burned it to the ground.

Not much was salvaged.
"My parents didn't really believe that they could actually lose their house, so they barely managed to save a few things". Maha was only five years old when this tragedy happened, yet she remembers how important this house had been for her parents and how happy they had been there.
 
It was years after the blow that her parents realized that they had lost all their photographs during that tragic misfortune. “They had lost their house and that was the biggest loss,” Maha says, “The realization of having lost their photographs only came later when they would be looking at photos and suddenly notice that there was a long period in their life that was left undocumented.”
Maha recalls her mother repetitively saying to her friends: “We have no photos left from those blissful fifteen years.”
 
Luckily, Maha’s mother had created a photo album of her wedding day that she gifted to her own parents. One day, Maha’s grandmother came to Siham with this photo album and told her: “You gave me this gift to remember your wedding day, but now that you’ve lost all of your photos, this is all you have left. I give it back to you.” This photo album, along with an old Kodak box containing a few snapshots, were the only memories left from 1960 to 1975.
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“For Nadia and Adel, it must have been terrible, because they have no photos of themselves as children. It was different for me, because I was only 5. It was less traumatic.”
 
In 1997, Maha took the initiative to start gathering all the family pictures in order to consolidate the collection and start organizing it. She classified them into time periods and labeled each package thoroughly. Clearly, the loss of her parents’ family photos had made her aware of the importance of safeguarding all the images that were created later on. "We'd always hear stories and anecdotes from our parents' early years of marriage, but never reached out for a picture to show. Something was missing in the family history.”
 
Later, in 2009, Maha started the strenuous process of scanning every picture. When looking at the timeline she tells us, there is clearly a huge gap between 1960 and 1975 and it is impossible to fill. "I look at my parents' photos and I try to understand: who were these people? You wonder what they were thinking about when they had those pictures taken. You try to catch a glimpse of yourself in them because you’re about the same age they were in those photos.
 
“I remember my mother well from 1976 and onward and a lot of the pictures I have of her are photos I’d taken of her while growing up. But I keep asking myself how did she get to become who she was? What was she like when she was younger, still a newlywed and a young mother?"
We pause for a moment while Maha emotionally remembers her mother and their shared memories.
Memories are tricky. When history escapes us, only fragments remain: words and images. But what do we do when there is no tangible proof, no pictures to show? As we grow older, we look back at our lives and our parents’ lives and we wonder if our parents went through the same things we are going through when they were our age. Sometimes looking at pictures of them during that period can help us create the answers, but when those photos don’t exist, we could be at a loss somehow. 
 
One day a friend of Maha’s tagged her in a picture on Facebook. It was a photo of her mum and a friend of hers taken in the 1960s which an antique shop in Beirut had posted on their Facebook Page. Apparently the antique shop had received a box of old photos from an undisclosed source. Maha, for the first time, caught a glimpse of her mother from that period of time.

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Maha and her husband have set up a great system to archive their current digital pictures and take great care in making sure they are safely backed up so that they'll never have to face the same kind of loss.
“I, personally, get really attached to photos. For my father, the biggest loss he suffered from the war, besides the house, was his books. But for my mother and me, it was the photos.”
Today, Maha knows that her photos are properly archived; she’s started the scanning process and has multiple backups of her current digital photos. But she still wonders, if war were to break out tomorrow, will photos be the first thing she saves?
 
When disaster strikes at home, our survival instincts prevail. We know we have to leave, so we pack up a few things: money, jewelry, passports, perhaps a couple of valuable items. We don’t think about photos yet when the storm is over we realize we’ve lost the most valuable possession we had; one that holds our memories, our stories, and our family history.
 
Lebanon’s civil war might be long gone, but if history taught us anything, a disaster is never too far from us. Take action today and let forget-me-not help you safeguard your photo collections.
 
*Thank you to Bastille for inspiring us the title of this Blog Post. Listen to their song “Things we lost in the fire”

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The Blue Elephant in the Room

5/13/2015

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At the beginning of the Lebanese war, this family had to flee their home in a rush; they threw all their photos in small suitcases and hid them in a warehouse before they fled the country. Thirty years later, the eldest of the family discovered those suitcases and asked me to help him get those memories back to life.
When I’m asked what I do for a living, I answer “I’m in the family connection business. I get your family photos organized so you’re able to share the stories they hold with loved ones and pass them over safely to future generations.”
The person I’m addressing spontaneously starts talking about his photos and how he would love to get them organized. Then come the practical questions: “But how will you be able to do the work if you don’t know my family?” new clients ask me anxiously. “I will have to sit with you for hours and I don’t have the time for this!” they worry. The burden of what seems like an overwhelming project start to take over again.

So, how to overcome the anxiousness of starting a photo organizing project?
It’s easy: just lay back and enjoy the ride!

Photo-organizing is a personal and intimate business.
During first assessment meetings, clients rarely talk about photo organization. They start by telling stories: people that matter, places they cherish, trips that changed them, etc. I listen carefully because I know it’s those people and these stories that matter and I’ll find them again in the photos. The trust-building process between me and the client starts with storytelling.
I then follow-up with a more systematic questionnaire where I ask my clients about the key people in the family, milestone dates such as birth dates, weddings, graduations, places they’ve lived in, their contribution to community and social services, their political involvement, etc…

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This is the basic working kit of a photo organizer. A photo organization project involves a lot of archeological and detective work in order to find hints and clues that help identify the people, places and events. I use sticky notes on the back of photos I have questions about. Dates and events can be written on the back of a photo with a photo safe pencil. The internet helps tremendously when you need to identify landmark places and buildings and I always wear gloves while manipulating the photos!
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To the left, the box as my client handed it to me at the beginning of the project. To the right, the content of the box after the first round of sorting.
It is discouraging to look through your own photos when they are stacked in a storage box like this but not to me! Armed with the initial information I’ve been given, I start going through the stacks of photos and themes start to emerge: family vacations, summer houses, ski trips, graduations, weddings, birthdays, etc… I make sure to reorganize the photos according to the themes, and then go through them once again to separate poor-quality and duplicated images.

Now I’m able to show my client an overview of his entire collection, classified in themes and only then are we able to make decisions together about what photographs to keep and display, what albums we want to create, and what we can archive and backup.

Armed with my detective hat, I look for additional clues that help me identify the situations occurring in each photograph.

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In this example, my client wanted to remember where he took a specific group of friends to dinner back in 2003. Looking closely at the tableware, I was able to distinguish those blue elephant designs and voiced it to my client; he jumped up of his chair and said: “Yes we took them to the Asian restaurant the “Blue Elephant!”
Photographs are among the most prized possessions we have, nothing connects us to our history like a photo. But they also cause a lot of stress and anxiety for people that don't have the time or the patience to organize them into books or boxes. Working with a photo-organizer helps envision the final result, and break down this project into small, easy and manageable tasks. As I progress with my clients and get their photos sorted, I notice that their feelings of anxiety are replaced by the satisfaction of knowing that their memories can be enjoyed and are safeguarded.

So round up your family, their photos, book your free consultation session with us, and start preserving a lifetime of memories.

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Expédition en Europe

4/22/2015

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In the summer of 1953, Charles Corm, Lebanese industrialist, writer, and philanthropist, took his wife Samia and their four children David, Hiram, Virginie and Madeleine on a road trip from Beirut to Europe. They traveled through Turkey, Greece, Italy, Yugoslavia, Austria, Switzerland and France and visited many cities along the way. Today an accomplished architect, David had already developed an acute sense of aestheticism and was able to beautifully capture the best moments of this trip.
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The Corm Family at the beginning of their trip on July 29, 1953.
Upon their return to Beirut, David created three photo albums of this family trip where he carefully annotated each of the pictures. Being a natural born storyteller and gifted with an innate talent for creating scrapbooks, the result was astonishing; it is a real pleasure to go through those albums, to admire his meticulous calligraphy and read his remarks and annotations while looking at the photos.
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An extract of one of the three albums
62 years later, the albums are still in pretty good condition with the exception of the scotch tape pieces used to mount the photos on the album pages as time lead them to peel off, turn yellow and stain the corners of the prints. They are however, fragile and frequent manipulation can damage them.

Hiram approached me with those photo albums and asked me how I could help him preserve them and share them with his siblings. He wanted to reignite the memories of that family road trip by creating an object that they could touch, feel, enjoy and share with their own families.

I suggested we create a replica of those albums in order to make the new book as true as possible to the original albums.
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The final product with the original albums
I then approached our partners at My Easy Prints. My Easy Prints is a photo-oriented service, located in Beirut, Lebanon, that offers photo books and other photo-based products. When it comes to any kind of printing, book design and book binding, they are the ones I trust will give me and my clients the informed guidance we require.

We had the album pages scanned; we chose the appropriate type of printing paper for such a project, designed a sober cover and the result was a beautiful book.

Hiram gave it the title: Expédition en Europe – 1953 – Famille Charles Corm.
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At My Easy Prints Workshop during the final step in the book binding process which involves gluing the end leaf to the inside of the cover.
Hiram was so pleased with the outcome that he ordered multiple copies to gift to his family.

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The final product as a replica of the original albums with the exact same photo album pages, layout and captions
The importance of such a project is to reproduce the same feel and mood as the original photo album; to be able to share memories and family adventures when originally only one copy was available. Photo albums are a natural legacy project and it is guaranteed that they will strengthen your family narrative.

It’s time to take out your old albums and scrapbooks from the cupboards and we’ll plan a simple and straightforward process to help you organize, preserve and share your photographic collection. Contact us to book your free consultation session.

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Honor your story. Tell it in photographs.

4/2/2015

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Watch this video and see how you can turn your cherished photographs into a life chronicle.
We help you tell your story, one photo at a time: Book your free consultation session with forget-me-not
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Ma Cabane Au Canada

3/13/2015

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This is the story of our countryside house in Limousin region – France. A small barn that my parents converted into a vacation home; a home away from home filled with memories of carefree summer days; a happy place, a little piece of paradise, just like Line Renaud’s cabin in Canada, a place where we always return.

“Ma cabane au Canada
C'est le seul bonheur pour moi
La vie libre qui me plait
La forêt
Si le sort m'enchaîne ailleurs
Toujours l'élan de mon cœur
Reviendra vers ma cabane au Canada”


Line Renaud

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1993
 In 1968, my parents bought a barn and decided to convert it into our vacation home. Renovation works lasted 5 years and were being done by local construction workers under the supervision of our neighbor and friend. Every summer, my father contributed to the renovation: he built the surrounding wall, paved the house terrace, planted trees etc. My mother took great pleasure and care in furnishing the house with antique furniture and objects that she’d discover in flea markets.

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1975
I was born in 1973 and we spent our first summer in this house as a family in 1974. I took my first steps there and my first shoes are kept in a cupboard drawer as a souvenir of this great achievement.
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2008
My older brother and sister had nice orange Motobecanes that they rode around the countryside and to the nearby villages.

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1975
We spent 3 months each summer discovering the area. We frequently received friends and family from Beirut who spent their summers with us. My mother worked in the garden beautifying it with flowers, my father continuing his home improvement works and we kids playing, reading and helping out – year after year.

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1979
My love and fascination for tractors was born there. I first drove one at the age of 7.
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1980
Our lives are shaped by what we love and the places we grew up in. And those summers in this house highly contributed to the grownups we later became. Now 40 years later, we still cherish it for all the good memories and times we spent there as children and as a family.

As they say: “Charity begins at home” so when I set up forget-me-not, I started organizing my own photographs and narrating my own stories. I went hunting for all the photos that were taken during those summers. They were all kept in boxes in a cupboard in my parents’ house. I spread them out and started organizing them by dates and themes. I was so pleased to see that some were dated already and for others I put on my investigator hat and looked for hints in the photographs to be able to date and properly caption all of them.
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My goal was to create a photo book that would tell the story of our summers there. I wanted to print several copies to gift to my brother and sister. I scanned the photos, then worked on designing the album. There is nothing more heartening than seeing the glow and emotion in the eyes of my brother and sister when they each received a copy of the book.
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Now our best memories are within reach. They can be easily shared with our children. We only have to take out this photo book, sit together and start telling them the story.

Your photos have the power to strengthen your family’s story, traditions and values. We are a visual society and photos tell stories. We can see in our family photos how our ancestors lived, what values mattered and what life was like long before technological advances became an everyday happening.

The Association of Personal Photo Organizers reports in their Insiders Guide to Photo Organizing:
Studies show that photos have a positive impact on families by connecting generations and reinforcing positive values. In fact, many experts agree that photos have a significant impact on the emotional well being of children. Parenting and youth development expert,
Doctor G (Deborah Gilboa, MD) says that “organizing and displaying photographs connects children to our families, our values and our life goals for them.”

Once your photos are organized, you can create projects with them that you will be able to share with your loved ones: Your wedding album, a photo book you made especially for your great uncle 90th birthday, your mother's birthday video, a collection of fine art prints with your ancestors' antique photo portraits. The possibilities are endless.


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My brother tells me that he looks at the photo book every Sunday and smiles. No other gift could have made an impact like the photo book of the house in Limousin.

In the end, we all become stories and memories that we leave behind. Photographs are our memory retrieval tool because they are evidence of the lives we’ve lived. They shape our experience of reality and allow us to chronicle the world and its diversity. They help us build memories and shape identities. In a study On Photography, Susan Sontag, cultural analyst, novelist and filmmaker, writes:

“Through photographs, each family constructs a portrait-chronicle of itself - a portable kit of images that bears witness to its connectedness.”

Take action today and start organizing your photographs with us.
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Will you be remembered?

3/2/2015

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One day, while going through your old family photographs, you come across this odd and blurry snapshot of a couple in a rowboat. You try to recognize the faces in the photograph but no name comes to mind. You ask your mother, and she tells you the story of your grandfather who missed the boat that was taking him and your grandmother to their honeymoon in Antwerp and had to take a rowboat to catch up with the ship off the coast of Beirut.
Now the photograph has meaning. It tells a story; the story of your grandfather who was renowned for not being punctual.
And when you show this to your children, you can tell them a story too.
And this odd little photograph can keep your grandfather’s stories and memories alive.

So what will you do with the shoeboxes filled with prints and negatives that you don’t know how to organize?

Do you actually know what images you have on your phones, computers, cameras, memory cards and hard disks?

Most importantly, what stories do your photographs tell if there’s no one to offer a narrative?

forget-me-not is a unique photo organizing service that is dedicated to organizing, preserving and sharing your photographic heritage.

“A photo organizer helps their clients find solutions for organizing, protecting, and enjoying their photos, videos and other important keepsakes and memorabilia,” said professional organizer Cathi Nelson (APPO). “By doing so we bring a sense of relief and reassurance to our client’s lives, as their feelings of guilt and anxiety are replaced by the satisfaction of knowing that their memories can be enjoyed and are safe-guarded.”

As photo organizers, we are committed to highlighting the stories you want to tell through your photographs. We help you:

●             Organize your photo collections.
As we go through the process of organizing your photos (sort, categorize, label, scan and archive), we ask you questions to capture your stories.

●             Share your most cherished memories with friends and family.
Once your photos are properly organized, we get creative with photo books, video slideshows and fine art prints to tell the stories of your best moments.

●             Protect your photo heritage — by creating back-ups of your photos and storing them securely online (in the cloud), digitally (on external hard drives) and in print.

At forget-me-not, we help you manage a lifetime of photos, providing you with a professional level of services and support that will give life back to those photographs, the precious memories they hold and the stories they tell.

Organize your photographs and preserve your memories with forget-me-not. Make sure you are remembered for the generations to come.

Start today by scheduling a free consultation session with us.



 

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forget-me-not | Organizing Your Photographs, Preserving Your Memories

2/19/2015

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Forget not the memories your ancestors left behind,
Forget not the legacy you inherited and carry in you,
Forget not the stories of a time you don’t recall,
Because the world is shaped only by two things: the stories you tell, and the memories they leave behind.

So as the old saying goes: preserve your memories, keep them well, what you forget, you can never retell.

forget-me-not is a unique photo organizing service, ready to help you:
- Build your Photographic Stories
- Organize and Rediscover your Print and Digital Photos
- Create Customized and Sustainable Photo Archives
- Preserve Your Memories, One Photo at a Time
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