Treasured memories: A glimmer of hope for those with flood-damaged photos

People in Hawke's Bay with damaged photos and albums shouldn't give up hope yet. Photo / Supplied

Photo experts have a clear message for those in Hawke’s Bay who may have lost hope when it comes to salvaging their flood-damaged pictures, and that’s not to throw them away so easily.

Lazer Photos & Cameras specialises in photo restoration and told Hawke’s Bay Today while it is harder to recover flood-damaged photos as time passes, there are definitely ways to give them the best chance of recovery and restoration.

“As soon as photos are found wet in the floods, the best thing to do is separate them if they are stuck together and then hang them up to dry,” said a representative photo expert.

“You can also briefly soak them in water to pull them apart again.”

Once this had been done and the photos were dry, people could then get their photos “scanned at a higher resolution and then restored and reproduced from there”.

The expert said even though it wasn’t a quick process and there was a balance to soaking photos again without further ruining them, restoration was definitely achievable.

For those in Hawke’s Bay who were concerned or unsure about whether their photos were salvageable, Fujifilm NZ is also urging people not to throw pictures away and is going one step further to help the community.

The company will set up a pop-up restoration centre from March 27 to 30 at the Napier Tech Sports Club.

“We will be travelling to affected areas to help people restore and repair their precious memories for free. Our first restore station is going to be based in Hawke’s Bay, where people can bring in your old photographs and we’ll assess them and restore the ones we can,” a company representative said.

“We have asked people who have lost sentimental photographs damaged by the cyclone/floods to please not throw their photos away, instead we are asking people to protect their photographs.

The representative highlighted the most important thing was to dry the photos and albums in the shade.

Album pages should be opened, but photos shouldn’t be taken out of the plastic sleeve.

“Mud and debris can be cleaned off later. Do not store wet photos or albums in a plastic bag as bacteria will grow, which erodes the quality of photo prints.”

Freezing prints is a good option, said the representative, because this will stop bacteria from growing. People should also try to interleave photos with baking paper when freezing.

Fujifilm said it will be setting up more stations around New Zealand.

The company is encouraging those in Hawke’s Bay with damaged photos to drop them off on March 27-28 between the hours of 10am and 8pm.