What to do when your photos are flooded

A lot of people in the Northeast are trying to recover from flood damage.  One of the most heart-rending losses is when photos get waterlogged, stuck to each other, or stuck to glass.  Professional photo restoration experts (like Hatch Photo Fix) can fix a lot of this damage, but there are number of things flood victims can do to help themselves.

The first thing to do is put your wet photos face-up on towels.  Separate them; don't let them overlap or be in piles.  The idea is to get air circulating around the pictures, so running a fan in the room will help as well.  Keeping air moving reduces the amount of mold that forms on the picture. (Mold shows up as small spots, black, white, red, or green).

If you have photos that are stuck together, but only for a day or two, you can try this:

Get a jug of distilled water and a shallow pan (tupperware is fine).  Put the stack of pictures in the pan and cover with the water.  Wait one hour and try to separate them.  Let them soak another hour and try again.  Finally, add ONE DROP of liquid dish soap to the pan, and go one more hour and try again.

What's happening is that there's a race between separating the pictures and lifting the actual images off the underlying paper, which is non-recoverable.  So keep an eye on things.

The same technique works for pictures stuck to glass, but the soaking time may be longer. What I do when dealing with images stuck to the glass is clean the glass, scan the image through the glass, and THEN try separating.  That way you have a back-up to work from.

If your picture has acquired a really nasty curve from drying unevenly, here's a way to flatten it, at least temporarily.  I actually did this with an 1898 8" x 48" panorama of a cavalry regiment, rolled to the size of a diploma for over 80 years,  and it worked, at least long enough to have a working copy made.

Take your picture, several towels, and a 2 pieces of shelving to the nearest Y or gym with a steam room. In the steam room put one towel on the bench, put the picture curl-up on the towel.  Put the second towel on top, and crank up the steam.  15 to 20 minutes is probably enough to start the paper relaxing.  At this point add a shelf to the stack, and add some additional weight if you want (sitting on the shelf might work, but those splinters!).  Go into the steam room periodically (every 5 minutes is good), and when you judge your paper is as relaxed as it's going to get, turn the stack over and add the second shelf.  Use large rubber ands to hold the whole assembly, and go on your way rejoicing -- as far as the nearest frame shop where you can have your image safely dry-mounted.