Is it worth it

Michael Markey

Michael Markey

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For the second time I find myself going through a stack of Kodachromes from the sixties and seventies.

My former wife brought them around ,shot by her aunt ,she wonders if they are of any interest.

I`ve done this before and dutifully scanned the family pics and emailed them .
The family showed little interest.

This time I`ll once again ,keep the people shots but dump the sunsets ,flowers and landscapes.

I still have a box of MF negs taken in the twenties and thirties to go through but wonder ,given the families previous lack of interest, how worthwhile any of this is.

Does anybody give any thought to how their "legacy" will be treated ?
 
It's worth it. I've recently scanned family photos going back to the sixties/seventies (a few B+W's back to before the 2nd war of my family in Switzerland).
My mom and her brothers and sisters love them. Even my nieces and nephews pass them around on FB.
People appreciate these things. Even if they might seem to take for granted the effort it takes to arrive at FB etc..
 
I've done the same thing with slides dating back to the late '40's and early '50's. Haven't spread them around to family as of yet. Don't really know if I will.
I'm sure my photos will be summarily dumped from the hard drive before my computer is donated to a charity some day, same as my old stereo system and all the cameras I've somehow managed to keep in my possession in spite of my wife's yearly house cleaning.
I'm especially lucky she hasn't dumped me already.
 
back alley said:
i sometimes wonder what will happen to my images after i'm dead & buried...
Click to expand...

The ones I haven't printed and given away will likely stay unprinted and not looked at on screen exactly as most are now.
My negs will all probably be thrown as it will be too much trouble to go through them.
I've understood that photography for me is now just an odd print on a wall. The main pleasure derived is by myself taking it and in my own assesment getting it right.
I think the best way to make sure your pictures get looked at is to make photobooks that will be found and browsed.
I've got boxes of kodachromes my dad and grandfather took which never get looked at. If they were books it would be a different story.
 
Hello Michael
Since my parents died some years ago, our son has had to create pieces for school regarding his 'family tree.' To be able to pull out old photographs or negatives is a wonderful way of remaining connected to loved-ones long gone. I'd recommend keeping them.
 
Michael Markey said:
...
I`ve done this before and dutifully scanned the family pics and emailed them .
The family showed little interest.
...
Click to expand...

Normally, people want their family pictures. Just their, mostly.


It is also normal not to want sunset, flowers and such pictures.
Only if you became famous with this kind of pictures and they are worth of something ;)
 
Most of my photos are of interest to me mostly. But if I want to have them around after I'm gone and be sure that they are not lost forever, I create a book now using Blurb or other print-on-demand service, register it with an ISBN and copyright, and submit a sample to the Library of Congress. Someone will maintain it after I cannot, and someone might even see it now and then.

I scan old photos of family and friends for my enjoyment, and share them with those pictured when they want to see them. They can have them too. But I see little real interest from them to obtain the collection. So such efforts are for me, and I don't worry about what others might think of them.

G
 
nobbylon said:
The ones I haven't printed and given away will likely stay unprinted and not looked at on screen exactly as most are now.
My negs will all probably be thrown as it will be too much trouble to go through them.
I've understood that photography for me is now just an odd print on a wall. The main pleasure derived is by myself taking it and in my own assesment getting it right.
I think the best way to make sure your pictures get looked at is to make photobooks that will be found and browsed.
I've got boxes of kodachromes my dad and grandfather took which never get looked at. If they were books it would be a different story.
Click to expand...

great incentive for me to start putting together some small books...
 
Most of my photos that weren't of family began to be overlooked by my family. Even after our house fire and all the jobs between then and now, I have continued to take family photos, many digital. Especially those my kids are interested. A couple of years ago, I guess my daughters realized I was getting on in years, and my youngest began looking for every photo she could find, and copied them.

If it were me, I would keep all that interested me. I would copy for the kids all that interested them. Those photographs of and for the family are how we stay in memory after we are gone. Again, that is just me.
 
My legacy is in my children and grandchildren. What they do with that is in their hands now.

My photography is mostly for me. Good thing that I like it.

My revenge? I am beginning to print some of the photographs I like as 11x14. Maybe a few will survive in spite of what they think since it is not as easy to toss framed 11x14 prints as it is to toss a few boxes of negatives.
 
If you want the legacy to be passed on, you will need to plan ahead and take some steps to ensure they survive:
  • Edit them down to 1-5% maximum. Dropping the generic shots, as you suggest, is a good first step
  • Curate them: add captions whenever you can. Without captions, they are mostly useless
  • Print them in a photobook, and attach a CD at the back, although the long-term stability of CD-Rs/DVD-Rs as an archive medium is questionable

It would be great if someone like the Library of Congress or the Internet Archive would collect photo collections and store the, but that's not on offer today.

In your place I wouldn't bother unless I had children with the ex in question who would be interested in those photos.
 
I have found that some family members show very little interest in family photographs at one age, and then develop a strong interest at another age. Also, it is almost impossible to predict who will be interested and who will not. I have thousands of photographs inherited from several generations back, and I plan to pull out representative images, scan them, and distribute them generally to the extended family members....when I have the time, and I don't right now. If you think your photographs have historical value, it would be a favor to your family to identify some possible repositiories in your will, but do not require donation, as many archives may well not be interested in the images.
 
IMHO I have found that absolutely no one is interested in anything but images of people and tangible places associated with those people, their homes or places of work. Landscapes, trees etc. unless it is the tree in front of the old home or the view from the rear porch you can ditch or store in a box. If you don't know where it is from or who took it...that is why computers have delete buttons.
 
Yep ... I`ve done a quick sort on the light table and I`ve discarded about 60%.
I`ll scan the rest and post them ...as I did previously...and hopefully the family will derive some satisfaction ,if not now then in the future.

I agree that its the people stuff which seems to resonate the most.
 
A few years ago my in-laws brought me boxes of Kodachromes from when they were first married in the mid-1950's. I scanned something like 500+ chromes (many of them not so good), and gave them to them on disc. Even made a slideshow that I burned to a DVD.

In the five years since, they've never looked at them because they get very confused with their computer (they're both in their mid-80's). So this Christmas my wife took all the scans back and is making photo books from the images. I hope those get looked at more.

I have found that scanning images my Mom and Dad took in the 1940's and 50's with an old Brownie Reflex give me a lot of joy, and my siblings enjoy them too. My Mom died seven years ago, and my Dad forty-five years ago, so it's a way to still feel somewhat connected to them.

And finally, a buddy of mine has a box of negatives his dad took when he was in Vietnam during the war in the late 1960's. I would love to scan those.

Best,
-Tim
 
I've been working through this very question over the last few weeks, scanning some slides and negs from the last 15 years, and thinking about the transient nature of digital files.

What I've decided is that:

1. I really favor the digital process, both in terms of IQ, and the process itself.

2. I am growing less concerned about the fragility of digital files in the future-- I suspect, given that the number of people creating digital files keeps increasing, platforms and operating will of course continue to change, but there should be enough demand for conversion software-- thus, if one maintains their archive with redundancy, we should be ok.


3. Good prints are fairly long lasting also-- I think my legacy may instead be a selection of carefully edited prints.
 
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