Print your photos or risk losing them in the digital desert

Tiriel · 13-02-2015 02:16PM #1

http://www.breakingnews.ie/world/print-your-photos-or-risk-losing-them-in-the-digital-desert-662104.html

Interesting. I know that I had files on zip disks from years ago that I admittedly never actually put onto CD or external drives when I changed laptop.

The point that is made is that we are selecting what is important to save/copy and retain but in hindsight..

“..historians will tell you that sometimes documents and transactions, images and so on may turn out to have an importance which is not understood for hundreds of years. So failure to preserve them will cause us to lose our perspective.”

I know I'm guilty of not printing photos of family/friends or keeping albums.

ratracer · 13-02-2015 02:42PM

Back in 2010 my wife decided to get a photo book printed with a 'story of our year.' She has continued to do this every year, just ordered the 2014 yearbook today, and it is a beautiful reminder of family events to look back on, seeing kids grow, memories of people since departed! I'd highly recommend it

DaireQuinlan · 13-02-2015 02:50PM

ratracer wrote: »

Back in 2010 my wife decided to get a photo book printed with a 'story of our year.' She has continued to do this every year, just ordered the 2014 yearbook today, and it is a beautiful reminder of family events to look back on, seeing kids grow, memories of people since departed! I'd highly recommend it

This doesn't really address the second point that Cerf makes though, which is overlooking the many OTHER shots that don't immediately grab us but in retrospect, years later, would have turned out to be more valuable for whatever reason, but aren't around anymore because they weren't archived properly.
Every shot I've taken for the last 10 years or so is sleeved in negative (or transparency) form and stored appropriately. The B&Ws at least will probably outlast me by a good bit

Bob24 · 13-02-2015 03:00PM

"As operating systems and software are upgraded, documents and images on older models are becoming inaccessible"

I really don't buy the fact that technological progress could make current digital formats unreadable. If I am thinking of my lifetime, there is no way current image formats become inaccessible with future hardware or software without an update path. If this was to happen, the market of people who want to regain access to their memories would be so huge that solutions would come to the market.

Now, sure there could be a worldwide software virus or electromagnetic war wiping all the data from any single hard drive on this planet. But I don't really buy the point made in the article.

MrWalsh · 13-02-2015 03:16PM

Bob24 wrote: »

I really don't buy the fact that technological progress could make current digital formats unreadable. If I am thinking of my lifetime, there is no way current image formats become inaccessible with future hardware or software without an update path. If this was to happen, the market of people who want to regain access to their memories would be so huge that solutions would come to the market.

Its more like the media wont be readable, Ive still got 5 and a quarter inch floppies from my college days and there aint nowhere they can be read these days! Thats only 2 decades.

Bob24 · 13-02-2015 04:37PM

MrWalsh wrote: »

Its more like the media wont be readable, Ive still got 5 and a quarter inch floppies from my college days and there aint nowhere they can be read these days! Thats only 2 decades.

If you wanted to get the data off them, you could easily find a drive to read them on ebay (and if enough people had that need, someone would manufacture USB 5 1/4 floppy drives). Now the data on quite a few of them would likely be corrupted - but then it is a different story.

Also the way we are storing data is becoming more and more media independent.

I probably went to college a few years after you did, but all my college work has survived, moving from 3 1/2 in floppy drives, zip drives, hard drives, ssd drives and now to the cloud.

MrWalsh · 13-02-2015 04:42PM

Bob24 wrote: »

If you wanted to get the data off them, you could easily find a drive to read them on ebay (and if enough people had that need, someone would manufacture USB 5 1/4 floppy drives). Now the data on quite a few of them would likely be corrupted - but then it is a different story.

Also the way we are storing data is becoming more and more media independent.

I probably went to college a few years after you did, but all my college work has survived, moving from 3 1/2 in floppy drives, zip drives, hard drives, ssd drives and now to the cloud.

Yes I broadly agree, but I think what actually tends to happen is that people put stuff onto media, physically store that media somewhere and then only decades later look for a way to move it to something readable - Im thinking here of finding an old "cine-camera" after my grandparents died that had a few seconds of footage of us as kids on it - very expensive to get the whole 20 seconds of footage (or whatever it was) transferred!

Or media fails - just happened last week in our house, himself decided to move all his archived work from external hard drive to new funky mac and was faced with the click of death.

A lot of us tin foil hat wearers are not ready for cloud storage of personal files like photos etc... sure himself even has the camera of his ipad covered with a sticker in case anyone is trying to watch him through it

magicbastarder · 13-02-2015 04:53PM

while i accept that photos may be lost which could turn out to be historically important - who is going to look through them all? unless AI gets to the point where it can scan photos for historical importance...

Alanstrainor · 13-02-2015 04:58PM

I have started printing a lot more, every couple of months I'll pick out favourites and print them. But at this stage I just have them sitting in a drawer...which isn't exactly great!

I shoot instax film, and have bought notice boards which each photo gets pinned to. So at least that's something!

Bob24 · 13-02-2015 05:06PM

Alanstrainor wrote: »

I shoot instax film, and have bought notice boards which each photo gets pinned to. So at least that's something!

Now, that is fun ;-) (though more difficult to share on Facebook)

Alanstrainor · 13-02-2015 05:27PM

Bob24 wrote: »

Now, that is fun ;-) (though more difficult to share on Facebook)

Cameras a cheap, the film is about 80 cent a shot though...so not something you would shoot every day! But good fun none the less!

Bob24 · 13-02-2015 05:33PM

Alanstrainor wrote: »

Cameras a cheap, the film is about 80 cent a shot though...so not something you would shoot every day! But good fun none the less!

Yes ... I got an Instax Mini camera for my girlfriend and she's loving it (and I admit I am borrowing it once in a while)

But pretty specific use indeed.

Studio120 · 15-02-2015 11:24PM

Bob24 wrote: »

"As operating systems and software are upgraded, documents and images on older models are becoming inaccessible"

I really don't buy the fact that technological progress could make current digital formats unreadable.

This is a quote from an article at leicaphilia.com

"Before your faith in technology causes you to dismiss this as anecdotal hysteria, consider this: recently NASA discovered that they were unable to read digital data saved from a Viking space probe in 1975 because the format was now obsolete."

AnCatDubh · 15-02-2015 11:25PM

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

Every shot I've taken for the last 10 years or so is sleeved in negative (or transparency) form and stored appropriately.

film or digital?

unless using digital like most do (shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot,......) that I think you don't, then there may be little retrospective value to the multiplicities of exposures of the same scene (for every scene).

It is in some way similar to the argument - should you ever delete any digital image that you've taken.

Bob24 · 15-02-2015 11:47PM

AnCatDubh wrote: »

(shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot,......)

Granted it is a first world problem, but this is a illness of our times.

Go to any big event or at any world famous tourist sight, and you might only see real life through the screen of the iPad held be the guy in front of you. He will have loads of low quality pictures and videos of the scene that he will never look at.

I am exaggerating a bit, but we all have such experiences :-)

My rule of thumb: maximum 30-40 pictures per day while on holidays, and try to do more 15-20 if the holiday is 2 weeks or longer.

magicbastarder · 16-02-2015 12:04AM

AnCatDubh wrote: »

It is in some way similar to the argument - should you ever delete any digital image that you've taken.

i aim to delete most of them.

ED E · 16-02-2015 12:25AM

The idea that printing is the solution is BS imo.

That said, digital image storage is a big issue. A good example is a facebook post doing the rounds recently where a mothers phone was stolen with all her pictures of her dead son. She had them all on the SD card. Flash memory is volatile, especially cheapo cards. But average joe doesn't even consider it. Same way students will store their final year project on a single USB key.

My own workflow is import onto workstation, process and delete duds, automated synctoy run onto the NAS(with RAID), which finally encrypts and pushes them to the cloud. This is a little much for most people, but getting the idea of backups into everyones heads is a start.

twowheelsonly · 16-02-2015 01:42AM

ED E wrote: »

The idea that printing is the solution is BS imo.

That said, digital image storage is a big issue. A good example is a facebook post doing the rounds recently where a mothers phone was stolen with all her pictures of her dead son. She had them all on the SD card. Flash memory is volatile, especially cheapo cards. But average joe doesn't even consider it. Same way students will store their final year project on a single USB key.

My own workflow is import onto workstation, process and delete duds, automated synctoy run onto the NAS(with RAID), which finally encrypts and pushes them to the cloud. This is a little much for most people, but getting the idea of backups into everyones heads is a start.

I wouldn't say that printing is BS but neither would I agree that it's the only solution.

The technology nowadays is superb but I'm one of those that loves the tactile element of prints, just to have them in your hand and look back over old photos. It's not the same on a screen!! I'd imagine that a lot of people feel the same.

I print loads for myself as well as for others - many of whom will say that they haven't printed a photo in years but must start doing so again.
A prime example is a lad from my local football club who's now doing well in England. I've printed and given photos to his Mammy over the years since he played schoolboys. Said Mammy has a load of those photos framed and on display at home with various trophies that he won over the years and people love looking at them. They'd never be seen if they were sitting on a hard-drive or out on a cloud somewhere.

Everyone knows the feeling of looking back over a box of prints that are 10/20/50 years old and discussing the photos and times that they evoke. Cleaning out grannies house inevitably means finding loads of old photos. Will the future generations think of (or be able to) check grandads old computers/drives or will they go straight in a skip?

At the rate that technology moves on millions of photos will be lost. I think the article has a lot of merit to be honest.

Print your photos or risk losing them in the digital desert

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