Every picture tells a story. But the stories told by unorganized, random images usually fade and lose their meaning with time. illuminated Legacy, or iLegacy, the Los Altos-basesd company converts photos, slides, 8mm or 16mm movies and VHS tapes into DVDs and other forms of digital media incorporating images, text, narration and music.

“Our few most recent generations are among the first to be blessed with the ability to produce voluminous, high-quality images that document our lives. But this blessing comes with associated challenges,” said Michael Maurier, vice president of production at iLegacy. “Our home media is surprisingly fragile and easily lost or forgotten. I know firsthand the tragedy of losing precious family photos. It is the kind of wound that never heals and is a loss that is more keenly felt as time has passed.”

Maurier’s family home burned to the ground in 1956 when he was a youngster. As the years went by, his parents rebuilt their lives and replaced what had been lost - but the one thing they couldn’t replace was their collection of family photographs. “That’s why we created illuminated Legacy - we want to prevent other families from experiencing the same type of loss,” Maurier said.

Maurier uses the latest technology, along with his unique talents for storytelling, to take everything from old 8-millimeter film to fragile digital files and create memorable family portraits. As an example, he used the one remaining photograph of his great-grandfather from the Civil War to create a moving presentation using period music and graphics that would not seem out of place in a Ken Burns documentary.

“Like it or not, we are the custodians for our next generations,” Maurier said. He felt we have a responsibility to retrieve precious family photos from “the box,” as he called it, and preserve them rather than risk their being lost forever.

According to Maurier, analog images are cumbersome to watch, subject to deterioration with age, bulky and difficult to store, and vulnerable to loss via theft, fire or similar mishaps. Converting them into digital format makes them convenient to store, easy to reproduce - in the form of DVDs and online files - and ensures their survival as a legacy for generations to come.

iLegacy is located at 127 Second St. in Los Altos. For more information, call 917-0117 or logon to www.pubpow.com/ilegacy.