The Real Competitor to Digitizing Pictures is Time

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

An op-ed by Mitch Goldstone, cofounder and CEO of ScanMyPhotos

I helped build a photo scanning company, and I am glad our competitors exist.

That might seem a bit unusual at first! Many businesses are often advised to steer clear of mentioning competitors or to see them as competitors. However, after nearly 40 years — starting with developing and printing pictures, and later scanning photographs, slides, negatives, and home movies — I’ve come to see it from a different perspective.

In this work, the real competitor is not another company.

The real competitor is the calendar.

Every year, we see more old prints fade away, more slides deteriorate, and more home movies become brittle and fragile. Videotapes also face the same challenge, inching closer to being unplayable as the magnetic particles inside VHS cassettes gradually lose their charge. The glue that holds everything together starts to decay. It’s a reminder of the importance of digitally preserving these treasured memories before they drift away completely.

More boxes are being moved from closets to garages, then from garages to storage units, and finally onto estate sale tables. As the years go by, fewer people can look at a photograph and say, “That was your great-grandmother,” or “That was the house we lived in,” or “That was the summer everything changed.” It’s a reminder of the changing times and the importance of holding onto meaningful memories.

That is why I am genuinely glad companies like AncestryPreserve, Legacybox, ScanCafe, local photo shops, library programs, museum archives, and careful do-it-yourself projects exist. The more people talking about photo preservation, the more families may pause long enough to open the box they keep meaning to get to.

Family history is bigger than any one company.

Before smartphones, cloud storage, and endless camera rolls, family history lived on paper and film. It lived in albums with cracked covers, envelopes with faded handwriting, drawers that stuck when you pulled them open, and cardboard boxes that carried the soft smell of old paper and time. Sometimes the photos were labeled. Most of the time, they were not.

I still remember when families brought in rolls of film to be developed and printed at my retail photo lab in Irvine, CA. They did not yet know what they had captured. That anticipation was part of the magic. Birthdays. Weddings. New babies. First cars. Little League games. Family vacations. A father holding a child. A grandmother laughing in the kitchen. An ordinary Tuesday that only became priceless years later.

That is what photographs do. They wait until we are old enough to understand what they mean.

Axios Nashville by Adam Tamburin: “Nashville library launches Memory Lab for digitizing home movies.”

Over the decades, I have seen what happens when people finally open those boxes. A daughter sees her mother as a young woman. A grandson discovers a military portrait no one ever showed him. A family finds wedding pictures they thought were lost. Someone preparing for a memorial service sees a face they were not ready to say goodbye to. These moments are tender, heavy, joyful, and deeply human.

The photos are not just photos. They are proof. Proof that someone was here. Proof that someone was loved. Proof that ordinary lives carried extraordinary meaning.

That is why this should not be seen only as a competitive market. If any company helps a family save a box of home movies, that matters. If any company helps someone digitize their parents’ wedding photos, that matters. If any company gets a person to ask, “What is in those boxes?” that matters too.

Every saved photo is one less story lost.

The saddest loss is not always the physical photograph. It is the missing name. The unlabeled face. The child asking, “Who is that?” and no one in the room knowing the answer. Almost every family reaches that moment eventually. A box appears after someone passes away. The photos are spread across a table. A few people are recognized. Then fewer. Then almost no one.

That is when family history begins to slip away. Not because people did not care. Because they waited.

There is a lesson here for every business. Sometimes the mission should be larger than the market share. Sometimes the most useful thing a company can do is help people understand what is at risk, even when others are helping solve the same problem. That is not weakness. That is purpose.

I’m really happy that other photo preservation companies are out there. It’s wonderful to see this important topic gaining more recognition. I’m also glad that more families are being reminded that old photographs, slides, negatives, and home movies are treasures, not clutter.

They are an inheritance.

Not financial inheritance. Emotional inheritance. The kind you cannot replace once it is gone.

Whether a family chooses ScanMyPhotos, another service, a local expert, a library scanning night, or even their own scanner at home, my message stays the same: cherish and save your memories. Don’t leave the only copy of your family’s history hidden away, risking its loss once the storytellers are no longer here. A photograph can live far beyond us all, but only if someone takes a moment to save it. Every company that helps preserve these precious moments plays a vital role in rescuing pieces of someone’s life, making sure they’re never lost forever.

Frequently Asked Questions About Photo Preservation Companies

Why do photo preservation companies matter? Photo digitation companies help families save old photos, slides, negatives, and home movies before time, fading, damage, or missing names erase the stories behind them.

What is the biggest risk of waiting to digitize old family photos? The biggest risk is not just losing the image. It is losing the story. Once the people who know the names, places, and memories are gone, a photo can become a mystery.

Should families use ScanMyPhotos.com, another service, a library, or scan photos themselves? The most important thing is to start. Whether a family uses ScanMyPhotos, another trusted service, a local library program, or a home scanner, every saved photo is one less story lost.

[Edited June 6, 2026]