How to collect and keep family reunion photos

Why reunions are different

Families don't get together as often as they'd like to, so the pictures from these days matter more than most.

Your family spans ages, phones and comfort with technology. Reunions also often last more than one day, with people arriving and leaving at different times. Whatever you choose has to work for your 14-year-old cousin and your 80-year-old great-aunt.

Pick one place, and announce it early

Choose a single gallery before the reunion, and put the link in the invitation. If people know where photos are going, they're more likely to take them. Print the code and place it at the registration table and the food line, since everybody passes those.

Ask someone to be the photo person

Give one relative the job of making sure each branch of the family gets photographed. A list of must-have shots helps: each household, every generation together, the oldest and youngest relatives. Those are the photos people ask for years later.

Bring the old photos too

A reunion is a great time to digitize old prints. Ask people to bring a few, and have a teenager photograph them with a phone in good window light. Add them to the gallery, and ask older relatives to name who's in each one while they still can. Those names are hard to recover later.

Sort by day and keep a copy

For multi-day events, sorting photos by day makes the gallery much easier to browse. When it's over, download the whole set and keep it somewhere safe, then consider giving a family member a second copy. Family history is worth two copies.