How are you saving your images for your ancestor's?

Orrin · Feb 13, 2015

I was wondering how people are saving their images so that they can be viewed by
future generations. This article from the Telegraph illustrates the problem.

http://orrin.org/bb/DigitalPhotos.pdf

Being an old-timer, the majority of my images are in negatives & transparencies!

photoguy99 · Feb 13, 2015

I'm not. If my grandchildren want to know about me they can jolly well ask their parents.

Photos are ephemera. Always have been, but ever so much more now. It's not my job to preserve things for historians.

Cerf is a smart dude but he's being a bit silly. Digital formats are fairly stable now, and we no longer store them with technologies that take the data with them when they go obsolete. The bits are not going to rot. They're going to be deleted or be buried under other bits.

The problem isn't really a format one.

It's about ad hoc preservation and the enormous mass of data. The photographic record of our era is worthless not because it is JPEG but because it is several trillion images.

limr · Feb 13, 2015

You mean descendants. Ancestors came before us.

I'm also not saving images for future generations. First, I don't have children. Second, if I did, they'd have whatever prints I made of pictures that were important to me. Beyond that, they would just have to rely on their memories and story-telling abilities, which are just as valuable as physical images.

runnah · Feb 13, 2015

I sit for a regal style painted portrait every 5 years.

Next year I am thinking of having myself painted astride a bear.

Didereaux · Feb 13, 2015

They are getting the prints. IF they are rich enough to be able to recover what are stored in the ever changing tech versions, more power to them. I have great faith in prints, there are many around well over 100 years old. I would find it hard to believe that more than a handful of 8"/5 1/4", or 3.5" disks are still around and usable. I am sure someone will jump in and extol the virtues of same and claim to have many including the old drives etc. At the pace things are changing if you have a decent sized collection in a very few years you will spend every waking minute transferring them to the latest and greatest technology. Me I pick the ones I like, have them printed and put in an album....I have many that are 40 years old and look like they'll last many times more than that.

Orrin · Feb 14, 2015

limr said:
You mean descendants. Ancestors came before us.

OOP'S.....a bit of a "senior" moment on my part.

tirediron · Feb 14, 2015

Nor am I; I fully expect that once my life is at an end, the universe, in its entirety will cease to exist since all the best things (me) will be gone!

yellow ant · Feb 14, 2015

Never thought or worried about it until you mentioned it!

I think the problem with digital photos is that you will have so many photos that no one else is going to look through them all. Perhaps you select your best few each year and save those to pass on?

snerd · Feb 15, 2015

No way............... let 'em get their own!

Fred Berg · Feb 15, 2015

A photo isn't a photo until it's on paper and in a box that can be sifted through at leisure. When I die I want to leave behind an urn with my ashes and a shoe box with my memories.

waday · Feb 15, 2015

The wife and I have been printing photos and making albums for special occasions. I never really thought about it, but I guess those will get handed down (if we decide to have children).

bribrius · Feb 15, 2015

geez. Dont know. i have hard drives, negatives, vhs tapes, 8mm (no limr still havent had them switched over) and of course photos. I really just dread the entire thing.

limr · Feb 15, 2015

bribrius said:
geez. Dont know. i have hard drives, negatives, vhs tapes, 8mm (no limr still havent had them switched over) and of course photos. I really just dread the entire thing.

Just get a projector - I bet they're dirt cheap these days

I actually still have the Super 8 camera and projector (even tape player for sound!) that my father bought in the 60s. I'm thinking of firing that up again...I do like a good film project...

Orrin · Feb 15, 2015

photoguy99 said:
Digital formats are fairly stable now, and we no longer store them with technologies that take the data with them when they go obsolete. The bits are not going to rot. They're going to be deleted or be buried under other bits.

The problem isn't really a format one.
.

It's more of an obsolete media problem! Even today, if you found a Sony Mavica with a stack or floppies in an attic, there are very few modern computers that can still accept this media.