What's going to happen to your photos.....

[Bigtree]

when your gone?
Ever think of this? I just threw away multi-photo albums of an estate I was Executor of. Lots of subject matter I knew nothing about, trips, cars, and etc. It only met something to the persons behind the camera. Even family photos were not marked with names, dates and etc.

I wonder who will care about mine. No kids. Most of my photos are well composed, sharp, and are in the computer. Who will care?

What do you think about yours?

 

[baypharm]

In the end, no one will care. My pictures are special to me and me alone. After I'm gone then it will be all over. You can go to GoodWill or Salvation Army and find hundreds of photos and 35mm slides for sale that once belonged to someone. Memories that were special to that person. Only they knew the feeling of standing on a corner in the rain on a hot summer afternoon to get the right look. The places they went, the experiences they had, it was all personal. Now that they have died, no one cares. Dust we came from and to dust we will return.

 

[Apple fanboy]

when your gone?
Ever think of this? I just threw away multi-photo albums of an estate I was Executor of. Lots of subject matter I knew nothing about, trips, cars, and etc. It only met something to the persons behind the camera. Even family photos were not marked with names, dates and etc.

I wonder who will care about mine. No kids. Most of my photos are well composed, sharp, and are in the computer. Who will care?

What do you think about yours?

Well unlike negatives and actual printed photos, nobody will even know how to unlock our hard drives when we are gone.
Passwords, connections that don't exist anymore and technology that's moved on will all be barriers.

But I find it difficult enough to get my wife to look at them now! I can guarantee my daughter won't have any interest in them when we are gone.
So to answer the question, mine will become landfill like everything else I own.

 

[kenoh]

Same here. Apart from a couple of my images the rest desrve to be lost.

Mine will eventually be deleted and lost.

Think the only way to save them is to print them, display them, make someone else care about them.

 

[Christoffee]

I’m hopeful that my children will want mine. All my photos and videoes are family orientated, so hopefully seeing themselves and growing up and their memories being jogged of days out and family members that have gone will be of interest.

The question of context is one that has been bugging me. Is there a universal way (so regardless of operating system) to add notes to photos?

 

[The Bad Guy]

I don't care about my photos now while I'm alive, I can't expect someone else to care about them after I'm gone.

 

[Apple fanboy]

I’m hopeful that my children will want mine. All my photos and videoes are family orientated, so hopefully seeing themselves and growing up and their memories being jogged of days out and family members that have gone will be of interest.

The question of context is one that has been bugging me. Is there a universal way (so regardless of operating system) to add notes to photos?

Biro on the back of a printed copy? Nothing we do today is guaranteed to work in the future.

 

[Bigtree]

My hope is to print and frame my best, then the rest can go to the land fill.
I'm starting to pass on through email, to the family, shots of key family members (5 or 6 pics and not to overwhelm them) so they can enjoy them. and I will suggest they add a few shots to pass on too.

 

[akash.nu]

It’s a very good question. I guess, like any other material thing, everything will get destroyed someday.

 

[kenoh]

I’m hopeful that my children will want mine. All my photos and videoes are family orientated, so hopefully seeing themselves and growing up and their memories being jogged of days out and family members that have gone will be of interest.

The question of context is one that has been bugging me. Is there a universal way (so regardless of operating system) to add notes to photos?

BTW, is that the Commodore Amiga bouncing red ball?

 

[Nathan King]

I have a large number of framed prints in my house and even more in archival boxes. They will likely go the way of Charles Foster Kane's “Rosebud.” I do have a set of architectural images in a few city documents that some future researcher may stumble across.

 

[Ray2]

I need to backup.
I need to backup to the cloud
Drives in my bank's safe deposit box
I need to backup immediately, RAID

I need to buy Seagate stock.

 

[Christoffee]

BTW, is that the Commodore Amiga bouncing red ball?

My Amigas brought me so much joy! My ASCII art was a sight to behold!
[doublepost=1526914871][/doublepost]

Biro on the back of a printed copy? Nothing we do today is guaranteed to work in the future.

But what happens when the Biro is replaced? Will future eyeballs be compatible??

I hear you. I am hoping that .jpegs will be compatible for decades to come. The idea of me tagging photos in an OS agnostic way is that the photos are easily copied and shared with any family member that wants them. I am thinking of doing PDF scrapbooks with notes and stories on.

 

[jdechko]

Makes me think about the 30k+ photos I have in my library right now. How many are "good"? How many are meaningful?

I use my phone a lot for work, so many of the pictures I take are just photographic notes of some information that is only useful for a bit.

I think my kids would care. My someday grandchildren may care, but I doubt my great-grandchildren will.

 

[mollyc]

I scrapbook, so regularly print photos with stories. I mostly scrap digitally, so the photos can't easily be taken out of an album, but I like to think that my kids will take them with them some day and show their own kids. My husband and I occasionally pull out our childhood photos to show our kids, but they are all just literally photographs with nothing but maybe a name or place on the back of them. I take way more photos than I scrap, but I hope that my kids will someday read over the things I have preserved for them.

 

[Fishrrman]

It's possible to "look back" at the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century though the "hard copy" photos (prints, negatives, slides) that have been left behind by those who shot them, whether pro or amateur.

Even photographs that might have had "a connection to the shooter only" can still be interesting and informative. We may not know who took the pic, or why, but the pic itself still exists as an image to be viewed.

Within a family, such pictures were "passed on" to the younger ones. Downstairs we have a picture of my Dad on a tricycle, must have been taken around 1932 or so. It's faded and old, but it still "exists to be seen".

Doing so from the Twenty-First Century onward is going to become much more difficult, and in many cases simply impossible. Where are those personal/family pics today?

On smartphones and iPads or Androids, accessible only to the user. No user = no access.
Or on computers "as files" -- many or most of which will be lost after the death of the owner, perhaps even before (from "crashes" for which backups don't exist).

With the exception of those photos that exist "in the public record", I sense that the overwhelming majority of photos taken by private individuals are simply going to "disappear" with their owners.

The result is that those who live in the future will have "less of a photographic record of the times" (that we live in now), than they have of those who lived in the two centuries previous.

Is there something that could be done to "preserve" at least some of the images we take today for future generations to browse through?

I've got some ideas...

 

[kenoh]

My Amigas brought me so much joy! My ASCII art was a sight to behold!
[doublepost=1526914871][/doublepost]
But what happens when the Biro is replaced? Will future eyeballs be compatible??

I hear you. I am hoping that .jpegs will be compatible for decades to come. The idea of me tagging photos in an OS agnostic way is that the photos are easily copied and shared with any family member that wants them. I am thinking of doing PDF scrapbooks with notes and stories on.

ASCII art! now there is a blast from the past! and what a skill it was too!

 

[Apple fanboy]

So we won't be passing on our photos.
We won't be passing on our record collection.
We won't (by the time I'm popping my clogs) be passing on our film collection!

So basically our descendants won't really know a thing about us.

 

[bopajuice]

If you are talking about printed photos that is one thing, physical photo albums are great for sharing the family history. If you are talking about your digital library that is quite another issue.

I have digital photo libraries from the early days of iPhoto and OS X. Over the years I have bought new computers, sold old computers, replaced hard drives, etc. Which means I have accumulated many iPhoto libraries.

I am still struggling to find a way to organize and consolidate all my libraries. iPhoto and Photos are horrible at archiving and storing photos. I have tried to create one large album, but accessing the library becomes slow and tedious.

I am afraid in 20 or 30 years when I enter my twilight years, formats will have changed, programs will become outdated or replaced, some photos may no longer be accessible. Unless you have an "antique" computer sitting around with old software you may be unable to view your "old photos".

I really am having trouble figuring out a way to keep my photos accessible to my family and friends who want to view them in the years to come.

 

[kenoh]

So we won't be passing on our photos.
We won't be passing on our record collection.
We won't (by the time I'm popping my clogs) be passing on our film collection!

So basically our descendants won't really know a thing about us.

Well when you put it like that...

 

[Apple fanboy]

Well when you put it like that...

Well you know the issues I have with my descendent! We seriously might not even get to pass on our house and savings, let alone our photos.

 

[Cheese&Apple]

When I'm gone my lovely wife will likely liquidate everything and head off to a warmer climate with the cabana boy. The last thing on her mind will be my photos. The best I can hope for is that she waits till I'm gone.

 

[Apple fanboy]

When I'm gone my lovely wife will likely liquidate everything and head off to a warmer climate with the cabana boy. The last thing on her mind will be my photos. The best I can hope for is that she waits till I'm gone.

Lol. What about the camera gear?

 

[Bigtree]

So we won't be passing on our photos.
We won't be passing on our record collection.
We won't (by the time I'm popping my clogs) be passing on our film collection!

So basically our descendants won't really know a thing about us.

Record collection?? I'll be passing on to someone. I have 6000 vinyl records and 3200+ CD's in my computer.

 

[Cheese&Apple]

Lol. What about the camera gear?

Oh, that will all be sold-off quick as can be. Tell you what AFB, I'll leave instructions that she's to PM you to see if you want to purchase anything. Us Nikon users have to stick together.