Storing Photographs and Negatives

Since you and the shelter may want to make prints from your negatives for a long time to come, you should take care to store them (and your records) properly to adequately protect them.

After we have completed our session and made all the prints we need immediately, we type up all of our notes along with the date of the session.

We then take the negatives and store them in archival negative sleeves, recording the date of the session on the top. We then also take the better photographs and place them in archival photo sleeves, also recording the date of the session on the top. There is no need to keep all the photographs, just keep the best ones. We have our lab make a contact print the size of a 4 x 6 photograph that we also store to help us quickly match negatives to photographs.

When all of these materials are assembled, we place everything in an archival binder where they should be safe for many years.

If you are looking for a recommendation for quality archival sleeves, try Clear File at www.iconusa.com. We have been using their negative and photo sleeves and their binders for years because they are good quality and very reasonably priced.

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