Before Digital: I bought spools of 35MM film for my consumer-grade point and shoot film camera, taking careful aim and shooting no more than one or two pictures of each action or element I wanted to capture. I would then take my roll of 24 soon-to-be-pictures to the nearest developing center, and pay around ten dollars to have the film developed. I'd receive one (or two if it was a free doubles day!) copies of each photograph in a neat little envelope, with negatives tucked neatly inside their own sleeve. If I was lucky, about half the photos would be decent. Sometimes I'd tuck the good photos into photo albums or I'd stick the photo envelope into a box made just for the purposes of storing the photo envelopes. I'd occasionally mail (via US Postal Service) photos to friends and family.
In both BD and AD times I've enjoyed looking through hard-copy photo albums or boxes and through digital photo albums. My kids don't seem to differentiate much between the two; a few weeks ago 5-year-old Cam asked if we could look at some pictures of him when he was little. I started to pull out his baby photo album (it was a between stage for me) and he said "no, on the computer" as if I'd made a silly mistake like looking for the milk in the cupboard instead of the fridge.
Our third thing is an article originally published last summer on NPR's All Tech Considered.
In The Digital Age, The Family Photo Album Fades Away by Heidi Glen addresses the generational preferences for the 'final' edition of your photos, but also encourages us to think like an archivist when it comes to our digital photography collections.
What do you do with your photographs? Are you archiving your life in photos? Have you determined a way to ensure the great images you're capturing today will be around for a lot of tomorrows? Share your thoughts on this article and your ideas and tips for preserving photos in the comments.
I'm a writer rather than a visual artist, but the ease of digital photography has enabled me to use images in almost all my writing. So, hooray for that.
ReplyDeleteAs regards family photos, there is a definite transition in about 2005-06 from photo albums to stuff on the computer. The photo albums seem to me more real, just as having a book or CD seems to me more real than having digital text or music. But I'm of my generation, or maybe the generation before. I'm sure we'll evolve ways of deriving communal satisfaction from photo collections in digital archives. Cam can be our leader.
I don't know where I fit in on this. I love the albums, and haven't yet got into the digital land of storing photos. Perhaps I never will, and it will be up to my family going forward to make sense of all they find in my "shoe boxes"!
ReplyDeleteI have my pictures on my phone which syncs them up with the cloud. Other photos I have on an external hard drive and I have them sorted out in folders based on the subject: Chase, Grasie, Family, House Building, Flowers, and misc. I really should get them all organized in one place.
ReplyDeleteI think photo albums are going the way of the high school reunions. With the ability to communicate through social media, I think reunions are less relevant and worth it.
ReplyDeleteI have been trying to find a way to organize and archive all of my digital media (music, documents, photos) for the past two years and haven't found a good way to do it for relatively cheap. I think I need to splurge for a large external hard drive and then spend some time organizing and archiving. I know that I have multiple copies of songs and photos but haven't spent the time necessary to put it all in one place.
I love iPhoto. I sync all of my devices to my Mac and then can share photos with family and friends through various means. Within iPHoto, I use the library feature and use events to sort by dates (winter 2013, spring 2014, etc.). I also use the faces feature and have mainly family members tagged. My grandkids love to click on their name and look at all of the pictures that they are in.
ReplyDeleteI migrated to totally digital about 4-5 years ago. Before that, I have a couple of stacks of photo albums (which are also arranged chronologically). I've always been a little overly zealous when organizing photos. This is helpful as you get older and have LOTS and LOTS of pictures of babies and children and aren't always sure whom they belong to.
I've also noticed some of my older pictures in photo albums are getting a bit of a strange hue to them. Hopefully, the digital age will help with preserving pictures of better quality into the future. However, I still print a photo book now and then for special occasions.
Not only are high school reunions becoming obsolete yearbooks are as well. No more Acorns....
ReplyDeleteDigital photography provides better photos and it's easy, but seems harder to keep up with from an organizational and display standpoint.
Yes, there is definitely a divide between pre-digital and post-digital at our house! The pre-digital photos are curated and neatly stored in albums, with the cellophane pages of the albums slowly deteriorating the photos, I think. :-( Just like yours, Deb.
ReplyDeleteThe post-digital photos are mostly all over the place.
I made a slide show for Robbie's graduation, so Robbie Photos are nicely arranged (though I don't remember if I tagged/curated them). I made Flickr show of the photos for my trip to England last summer. So I think that at least for me, only special events get me to organize photos digitally.
Do I need to scan/archive the prints, do you think? My brother did that with family slides, and I am so grateful!
I like the article's "baby steps" approach! Maybe that can be one of my summer projects.
On a related note, did anyone see the article about how taking photos interferes with memory? I think with digital devices always at the ready, and no film/developing charges, as Lisa mentioned, we do more photo-taking. Which may not be such a great thing.
Here's the NPR version: http://www.npr.org/2014/05/22/314592247/overexposed-camera-phones-could-be-washing-out-our-memories
This is a fascinating topic, with both personal and professional ramifications. Coe was making the transition to digital photography when I joined the team in 2001. This transition has been amazing while presenting new challenges for storage and archiving. On a personal level, I chuckle when my kids go through old photo albums looking for a throwback Thursday post on Instagram.
ReplyDeleteThis has been a funny topic for me that has transformed throughout much of my college experience. When I was in high school, photographs had to be printed and now everything is on Facebook whether I want it there or not. For me, Facebook has become a photo book and stores everything from the past 7 years. I used to hate photos, but now I love them and spend most of my social media time on Instagram peering into the windows others leave open.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everyone on here so far, storage is the key. I do not yet have a great system in place but think I will need to step up and invest in an external hard drive to store all of my past experiences.
Thank you for a great post!
I don't have a great digital storing system, but Facebook has just naturally ended up as my storage system!
ReplyDeleteI also have strayed from printing normal prints of photos, but my new habit is to make albums of major events - I've made Shutterfly books for my parent's anniversary, various vacations, and my study abroad trip. I think these are a better way for me to both keep and share my photos. Plus, through coupons, etc, I've been able to get the photo books pretty cheap as well, and they are definitely permanent!
I find my digital photos overwhelmingly depressing. I have the opportunity to take so many more photos than the 24 photos on the old roll of film that I'm stymied trying to figure what to keep and what to toss. I know where all my photos are and I do have a second copy saved to a separate disk and on Shutterfly and organized by "events/dates." Added to that is making a digital album to print - all the options for background pages, additional images to add an accent - my 24 page album of our trips out West with our son probably took me 30 hours to make. Too many options - too many pictures! That's my only album since I've started using only digital.
ReplyDeleteI really need to do a hard drive backup- but the whole project seems very overwhelming. Maybe these tips will encourage me to start!
ReplyDeleteThe last 4 years or so of photos are all on my phone and digitally backed up on Verizon Cloud as well as Google Plus. I have decided this to be sufficient for now. I really love photos, and so I still print and frame some of my favorites and hang them in my house. I have also used an old favorite with a digital twist of creating Snapfish (or shutterfly or Walgreens or wherever you want to make them) photo books. It combines my love for scrapbooking and photos with the digital age of not actually having physical photos! I upload the photos to the website and select backgrounds, captions, etc. and print out a photobook. That way I still have a hardcopy to look at but I don't have a shoebox full of photos! :)
Like many others we are caught in the cross over between technologies. We have hundreds of negatives and many accompanying pictures stored in a large fireproof ammo can left over from my husband's Navy career. Not very aesthetically appealing but the are protected from most elements (In our youth my husband's 35 mm camera survived 3 days afloat in the St John's River after the thieves who stole it tossed it there to avoid being caught with it---some benevolent soul found it and returned it to us via the name and address etched on the bottom of the camera).
ReplyDeleteWe also have assorted boxes and half finished albums along with a beautiful and crafty baby album recently created by my daughter to commemorate our first grandchild---interestingly all photos in this printed album were retrieved from Facebook postings.
Regrettably both my developed and digital photos as well as all of my husbands hundreds of slides are poorly organized, if the word organized can even be applied to their current condition. However, I am happy to state that we do have all of our digital photos backed up to an external hard drive and a memory stick; in fact I am sure some of them are backed up several times in the same place!
It seems that the ease of taking so many pictures creates an avalanche of both opportunity and need to organize that has to this point in time escaped me. I did appreciate the advice in the article to back up your back up to the latest storage technology every five years---we don't all want to get caught with having nothing but 8-tracks in a DVD world (dated analogy but you get my point.)
When my son was born, I swore I'd keep pictures in albums. I had them printed off and tried to keep them in order. There they sit in a rubber made box...out of order...When I got my iPhone, I swore I'd learn how to download the pictures and keep them on a disk. There they sit...in my phone...But at least they're in order!
ReplyDeleteAfter reading everyone's comments I realize I am like many of you. Digital age gives us an easy and inexpensive way of capturing life's moments. I've had to change my ways over the years to print and store these images but it is easy to ignore them because they are on the device. I do save them in many forms but I have to say that my husband and daughter love looking thru old photo books. Somehow seems cosyer (cosier?) than looking at a computer screen.
ReplyDeleteLike everyone else, spending time to really consolidate and organize photos when I could be living life and creating memories is challenging! I love photos in frames around my house and desk, and often put a reprint into a thank you or birthday card. I too have abandoned most photo album projects. The digital age is great when you can carry a memory card that has way too many photos on it...but yet have the very one you need in a moment.... :)
ReplyDeleteI love taking pictures. Instead of getting better about archiving them I have gotten worse. I have the proverbial box of photos both digitally and in print. I love looking through the old photos we just got a huge storage box full of from my mother-in-law. I think it is a very important way to preserve family history. So I do take care in trying to identify who is in the picture and where it was taken.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree with Heidi when she says how easy it was for parents and grandparents to put albums together. The only thing easier is that there was only one medium to take care of. But time and effort still had to go into putting those pictures together.
I believe that the problem of changing technology and trying to account for what we will have in the future is a huge concern. Hopefully the "cloud" will help. A few years back when we got our first digital camera and took classes on how to use it. The first statement the professional at the camera shop made was to back up, store your photos in print, on the card and on your computer. I do like Heidi's suggestion of also storing in a totally separate physical location.
I get variations of two comments quite often. 1) You take too many pictures. Oh it's Roger again... 2) You have such good pictures; thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI am a saver. I struggle to get rid of things. And I hope to organize the things I keep better, including pictures I take. Almost exclusively digital now. I have a good start on this, but lots of work to do still.
I do love NPR. (If you don't support IPR, what's your excuse? The %$#&ing pledge drive is on again. DO IT.) Here's another good one on this topic from a little while back: http://www.npr.org/2014/05/23/315240991/how-to-stay-afloat-in-your-infinite-stream-of-photos
The pledge drive is ONE day shorter because I renewed in advance!
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ReplyDeleteBY THE WAY: I started a coaching blog in one of Lisa's workshops years ago. I guess as far as Google is concerned, I'll always be coachRoger on Blogger.
ReplyDelete(I started coaching Mt. Vernon-Lisbon cross country when my daughter was on the team as a sophomore. I didn't manage to quit until I had 16 years of it under my belt.)
As I have a 'cognitively-challenged' (?) phone, I don't take nearly as many photos as some people with smartphones do. And, yet, over the years (the many, MANY years) the photos have accumulated. Most of my digital photos are on iPhoto -- and I do love the 'faces' function; though I have some photos in Dropbox (but I'm too cheap to pay for the extra capacity) and in nested folders on my hard-drive, which I backup regularly to an external HD. And, of course, there are boxes of old daguerreotypes ;-) in the basement. I'd love to digitize those older photographs, but it takes FOR-EVV-ER to scan with our home printer. I suspect there are businesses that would be willing to do that for me. Any suggestions/references?
ReplyDeletePrediction: Not far in the future these digital images are going to become better and easier to manage than the old photographs. Physical prints were typically stored in exactly one place each (be it an album, shoebox, or otherwise). That means pictures of Kid #1 are sometimes stored chronologically, sometimes by event, and sometimes out of order entirely because they got dragged to school for a class project or who-knows-what. As digital storage costs drop, all we need is someone bright to devise a standard tagging system, and you'll soon be able to find all images of Kid #1 instantly, even if they also include Grandma (which used to be a different album), Kid #2, Event #769134.67, or were used temporarily for whatever. The future is bright, as long as you don't care about privacy.
ReplyDelete