Kept by Crows

Hi, I'm Max. I live in Glassell Park, and in 2025 I watched the Eaton fire tear through Altadena, hoping the wind wouldn't carry embers toward my own home. Afterward, I thought about the thousands of families who lost photos, knowing most likely hadn't digitized any of them.

That's why I built Kept by Crows.

I take the photos sitting in shoeboxes and digitize them. You get archive-level master scans as well as carefully enhanced versions that go directly into your Google Photos / iPhotos timeline. The technology is finally strong enough to make this fast, easy, and affordable for everyone.

Crows are remarkable — they recognize individual faces and remember them for years. Next time you see one circling the neighborhood, take it as a reminder: your photos won't preserve themselves. Reach out to me to talk about your photos, or schedule a time and I'll come to you.

I come to you.

This starts at your kitchen table, not in a warehouse.

I arrive with a white tablecloth, archival gloves, and sorting materials. We sit down together and go through your collection. You tell me what you know — who's in the pictures, roughly when they were taken, which ones matter most. I handle every photo with care while you watch.

We organize your photos into batches by size, format, and condition. We talk about what you want — what gets scanned, what gets enhanced, how you'd like things organized. Nothing leaves your home until you're comfortable and you've signed a release.

From there, I take your photos to my studio for scanning and processing. When they're done, I bring everything back:

Archival scans and enhanced versions
Organized folders ready for upload
Your originals, returned in a fireproof case with plastic separators — better protected than when they left

The whole process is built on trust. You see how your photos are handled. You know exactly who has them. And you get them back in better shape than they started.

A clean, structured digital archive.

Each collection includes:

600 DPI archival master scans
Carefully enhanced versions
Embedded IPTC metadata
Files organized for immediate upload
Originals returned in a fireproof, water-resistant case

When uploaded to your photo app:

Photos fall into the correct timeline (when dates are known)
Face recognition begins identifying family members
Albums become easy to create and share

You can interact with your history immediately — without renaming files or sorting folders for hours.

Preserved for what's possible tomorrow.

Every original scan is preserved at full archival resolution. That means:

You can recreate prints at high quality
You're not locked into today's enhancement tools
As AI improves, your originals can be further restored

Your photos aren't just digitized for today. They're preserved for what's possible tomorrow.

There's more than one way to do this.

Do it yourself. Buy a $300–$500 scanner and spend hours scanning, cropping, naming, and filing. Most people start. Few finish.

Mail them away. Ship your originals to a warehouse, wait weeks, and get back a folder of files sorted by scan order — not by date, not by person, not organized for real use.

Hire a local Crow. We sit down together. I scan at archival quality, enhance carefully, embed metadata, and organize everything so it drops cleanly into Google Photos or iCloud — in the right place, ready to use.

Simple and transparent.

Per photo

Full shoebox (~200 photos)

~$200

Fireproof storage case

Included as an option

$50

No surprise add-ons. No complicated checkout tiers.