CASE STUDIES

Each case study below shows what shaped the scope, the duration, and the depth of the work.

FAMILY ARCHIVE CASE STUDY | Extra Large Collection

THE BYRD FAMILY ARCHIVE

Pickup
Early December 2025
Delivery
End of April 2026
Duration
Five months
Pickup Locations
San Francisco Bay Area
Banker Boxes
17
Final Digital Assets
Approximately 20,000
Specialist Labor
600 to 800 hours
Team
Studio lead and specialists across inventory, scanning, processing, organization, facial recognition, and archival boxing

SNAPSHOT

~15,000 print photos · Over 50 photo albums · 118 scrapbook pages across 3,278 total pages · ~1,800 slides · ~16,000 negatives · ~16,000 feet of 8mm film · Lots of framed photos · Over 50 mixed media items

INVENTORY

Eight variables determine the cost, timeline, and approach of any family archive project. Here is where the Byrd collection sat on each.
Collection Size
Total physical inventory across all formats.
Large. 17 boxes spanning nine formats.
Format Complexity
How many different media types need handling.
High. Prints, albums, scrapbooks, slides, negatives, framed photos, 8mm film, VHS, and optical and digital media.
Pickup Logistics
Single location or multiple.
Two locations across two regions of California.
Level of Curation
How much human judgment goes into deciding what gets scanned.
Full. Every print and negative reviewed. Duplicates and weaker frames set aside but never discarded.
Level of Organization
How granular the final structure needs to be.
Date and event specific. Every shoot anchored to a date or tight date range and tagged by event.
Metadata Depth
What gets embedded in each file.
Multi-field. People, places, events, and translations all written into the file metadata so the archive is searchable on any platform.
Special Handling
Anything outside standard scan and organize.
Japanese translation work on handwritten album annotations from the 1940s through 1970s. Outside specialist transfer for 15,650 feet of 8mm film. A family tree framework built before tagging began.
Delivery Format
How the family wants to access the final archive.
External hard drives with a Lightroom catalog. Physical originals returned in archival boxes.

SCOPE MARKERS

INVESTMENT

A family archive project of this size and scope ranges from $80,000 to $110,000.
Where a specific project lands within that range depends on the markers above. Higher curation depth, multiple pickup locations, special handling such as translation, fragile media, or outside specialist transfers, and date-and-event level organization all shift the investment upward. A simpler scope shifts it down.
Project-based pricing · Scoped in advance after Inventory Phase

WHAT WE FOUND ALONG THE WAY

Every archive holds things the family doesn't know are there. The Byrd collection held more than most.
01
The archive reached back to the 1920s.
The family had assumed the photographic record began with their grandparents. It began a generation earlier.
02
A family logo, designed by their grandfather.
Surfaced on a film reel during transfer. Mira had never seen it.
03
Negatives of their mother in the hospital.
Quietly waiting in a box for decades. Never printed. Never seen.
04
Film footage unlike any the transfer specialist had seen.
The outside specialist who handled the 8mm reels has been in business for forty-five years. He said he had never seen footage like this.
“
The places that you've seen in both Japan and North Carolina, they've been in our families for over 100 years, and they're actually still in our family.
— The Byrd Family

THE WORK, IN MOTION

A collection of this scope does not move in tidy phases. It moves in overlapping streams of specialist work, each running at its own pace.
Week 1
Inventory and pickup across two locations.
Weeks 2 to 8
Analog organization. Albums deconstructed. Family tree framework built.
Weeks 2 to 14
Scanning of every print, negative, slide, and scrapbook page. Outside specialist handles the 8mm film and legacy media.
Weeks 2 to 15
Scan processing. Color, file naming, foldering, and quality control.
Weeks 6 to 17
Archival boxing. Physical originals labeled, ordered, and prepared for return.
Weeks 10 to 20
Digital organization. Date and event tagging. Facial recognition mapped to named individuals. Japanese annotations translated and embedded.
Weeks 12 to 14
Video and film editing.
Week 20
Final delivery. External drives, Lightroom catalog, and all physical originals returned in archival boxes.
A Note on Scope
Every collection is different. The Byrd archive sat at the larger and more complex end of family work. A collection with fewer formats, a single location, or a less granular organization standard will shift the project significantly in both timeline and investment. The best way to understand where yours sits is a consultation.

CURATION OF ASSETS

CHROME HEARTS

Vintage-style banner with the text 'Cherokee Haykus' in ornate gothic font.

Chrome Hearts, a revered luxury brand with over 33 years in the industry, received a recommendation from esteemed book publisher Assouline Inc., to engage Picturli's photo management services. The purpose was to curate the brand's vast private and campaign photo collection. This project was exclusive and demanded a high level of technological expertise, as well as a creative approach to curate over 600,000 photo assets for "the best of" Chrome Hearts’ legacy book.

Picturli worked at Chrome Heart’s headquarters directly with the owners and their art department, to identify 5,000 curated photos for conceptual projects. We designed a customized keyword structure to provide a scalable search engine for their current assets library. We delivered the curated library with each photo tagged with the names of the actors, actresses, models, friends, and family members that appeared in the photo. We also tagged the campaigns in which they were used. Picturli set up the entire infrastructure needed to accomplish this monumental task, which we completed in four months, and all work was done on-site at the client's headquarters.

GLOBAL ASSET MANAGEMENT

APPLE PRODUCT LAUNCH

Silhouette of a bitten apple logo.

Media Arts Lab (MAL), the renowned creative agency responsible for managing Apple Inc.’s advertising campaigns, enlisted the services of Haleh Shoa, principal of Picturli, to spearhead the global billboard campaign for the highly anticipated launch of the iPad Mini. As a project manager, Haleh expertly led a team of 56 account managers, tasked with liaising with Apple clients across 5 continents to gather the necessary assets for their respective regions. Given that the asset requirements for each continent varied significantly based on regional specifications, Haleh and her team were tasked with building over 430 specific files, each adorned with unique product icons tailored to the needs of the region. Despite the complexity of the project, Haleh managed to deliver outstanding results, completing the project seamlessly within a tight 2-month deadline.