Who doesn't have boxes full of photos, slides or home videos sitting around in their homes, waiting to be dealt with? The commonly procrastinated task of converting old media into new is for fairly good reason. Until recently, there just wasn't anywhere local to have the service done.
"We did our research and found the cheapest way to [convert] slides is to ship them to India," says Hanna Stelman, a University of Michigan School of Information graduate who focused on preservation of information. "Why would you want to fly your priceless slides somewhere?"
To give people another choice, Stelman and her partners Eric Hansen and Rob Hoffman created
Priceless Photo Preservation, a business that converts an array of old media into usable and achievable digital media. All three partners have degrees in archiving.
"We make an effort to preserve things to archival standards," says Stelman, "meaning, files that aren't going to corrupt as easily. We also include compressed files to upload online."
Priceless Photo Preservation began from the partners' homes, but is celebrating the grand opening of their new downtown Ann Arbor location this week. Stelman says the business' growth necessitated the move to a dedicated space.
In addition to converting old media to new, the company can also enhance media, such as adding verbal recordings to media to archive memories along with images. Stelman says the goal of Priceless Photo Preservation is to expand beyond Ann Arbor into Grand Rapids and Detroit.
Source: Hanna Stelman, Priceless Photo Preservation
Writer: Natalie Burg
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