Is it worth it

I inherited the sketchbook of one of my ancestors from the 1800s. He was a watercolorist of real talent, and he depicted scenes from his travels as an officer in the British military, of a bygone era in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan.

It is one of my most valued possessions, personally speaking.

I suspect no one will want to go through your thousands of random images... but a curated physical artifact of your efforts... maybe.
 
mdg137 said:
...
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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Absolutely!!!

Prints are the final product...not the negative or the digital file.

And please, please, please! Do your future generations a favor...caption them!

I spent three full days with my mom last month going through photographs.
1. Neither of us looked at a single negative.
2. If we couldn't identify who was in the picture, we looked on the back.
3. If there was no caption the picture ended up in the doubtful box.
4. If you don't know who it is or where it is it has no family meaning.
 
I wonder what the conversation will be like in 30-50 years...? It's so easy to create images now, and 4K video, etc. now coming online. I could see my archive being in the millions of images (seriously). The entire post capture process is currently excessively manual in all aspects - image corrections, captioning and IDing, etc. As the software gets smarter, I can see it making decisions for us, if at least suggestions, mining image archives for facial matches and tying that in with caption info. I wouldn't be surprised if this was some sort of 'cloud' application that could also cross reference the archives of others to better tag and ID. Sure, privacy concerns, too...
 
Michael Markey said:
Does anybody give any thought to how their "legacy" will be treated ?
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I'm pretty sure all the photographs I like will be ignored, and only the family pictures will be kept or be looked at.

I'm sure all the photos on my hard disks will be lost forever, while perhaps the ones printed will be kept some time.
 
Maybe just get as many family members together as you can (perhaps easier this time of year) and put on a slide show. That way everyone gets to see them and you have only to give up a small amount of time. If someones wants an image digitised, it's most likely going to be just one or two of them. Plus it's how they were intended to be viewed!
 
photomoof said:
That is why as I age I find myself asking, what is all the worry about zillions of pixels really about? Oddly not much improvement in over 100 years IQ wise!

More and more i'm just iPhoning it in. 🙂
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Agreed ...if the shot doesn`t resonate on an emotional level its probably failed at least in the long term.
As much as anything else it was that aspect which struck me.
If we are shooting for posterity ...and I`m not suggesting that we should ... perhaps we need to pay more attention to the emotional impact of our shots rather than IQ.
 
... recent events have caused me to revisit this subject over the last few weeks, in the past I joked that I was trying to amass enough work to to cause the kids two trips to the tip ... not so sure that covers it now
 
I've asked my executrix to stick all my negs, and as many prints as she can fit in as well, into a tin trunk at the back of a hard-to-reach attic. With any luck someone will find them in 50-100 years (or more) by which time they should be quite interesting.

@pioneer: No, it's just as easy to throw out 11x14 framed prints as negatives. Try it.

Cheers,

R.
 
Well after the first cut on the light table I scanned the remainder and rejected perhaps another quarter.
The remainder I`ve posted to my former wife.
Its been an interesting exercise because this batch (I`ve done this before) comprised of shots of people that I wasn`t familiar with and therefore had no emotional attachment .

I was therefore able to view the material in much the same way as the Maier material was assessed.

Not surprisingly it fell short so we are back to the original contention ...what are the characteristics (apart from the familiar attachment) which ensure longevity of a shot beyond our lifetime or is it all down to serendipity.
 
Michael Markey said:
...
...what are the characteristics (apart from the familiar attachment) which ensure longevity of a shot beyond our lifetime or is it all down to serendipity.
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Something newsworthy, a famous person, scientifically interesting, or a beautiful girl usually make a photo collectable, and thus likely to remain beyond one's passing.
 
I don't know.

Maybe, when the petrol is gone, there won't be enough juice to keep a digital civilisation going. Maybe this gigantic electronic library of pixels will just quietly disappear. Like cassette tapes losing their magnetic charge, floppy disks, and cracking cc's.

I feel despair, when I think about the myriad images being made every second, the near infinitely humongous mountain of snaps, portraits, pack shots, landscapes, kodak moments, whatever, that we keep adding to every moment of the day, most of which is entirely forgettable. I feel dread at the thought of having to wade through flickr, or even the rf gallery, the worst part isn't the crud, which is easy to dismiss, it's the sheer amount of good and interesting work that, even though a small proportion, is overwhelming.

We already have a hard time getting a decent grip on our history and our culture. And we produce exponentially more and more. I am afraid the sheer mass of it will ensure that most of what we produce will be forgotten, if not lost in defunct hard drives.

cheers
 
Certainly couldn't care less about a 'legacy' in the sense of leaving an artistic legacy, but old photos have an appeal purely from a sense of nostalgia and learning more about one's family.
 
This year, a quite remarkable book by the name of 'Retro Melbourne' was published. It's part photography book, part historical archive, containing photos mostly taken by one man from the late 50's to the 70's. It shows the city and suburbs of Melbourne as they were when newspapers were sold on the footpath and the train station clocks were changed by hand, and it is utterly fascinating. The creator wasn't even a professional photographer; he was an engineer who kept a camera in his bag and obsessively recorded the streets, scenes and buildings around him. One day, I hope that my legacy will be of similar stature.

My grandfather was a photography enthusiast, and since he passed away, there are masses of old photos and albums that are uncategorized and undigitized. As my father is now retired and also something of a photography buff, he's going to start scanning all our family photos to preserve my grandfather's legacy. No one else in his family will have the time or, more importantly, the inclination to do this.

But here is another story for how things can be valued. Some years ago, I was with a woman who had two children. I spent a lot of time with them, doing portraits and candids, and after some time I made a photo album of large prints. The album itself was a hard leather affair with all the trimmings. Within a few months, this woman PULLED OUT HALF THE PRINTS AND STUCK THEM TO THE WALL WITH BLU-TAC.

This bloody woman was a high earning professional with a Masters and PhD, and yet had about as little regard for the singular unit of the album as some skanky ho living in a trailer with a needle sticking out of her arm. Needless to say, she never received anything like that from me again.
 
Roger Hicks said:
I've asked my executrix to stick all my negs, and as many prints as she can fit in as well, into a tin trunk at the back of a hard-to-reach attic. With any luck someone will find them in 50-100 years (or more) by which time they should be quite interesting.

@pioneer: No, it's just as easy to throw out 11x14 framed prints as negatives. Try it.

Cheers,

R.
Click to expand...

... that sounds like an excellent idea

Most of the old stuff I have is there because it was forgotten or neglected ... my grandma threw away lots of negatives in her tidying zeal
 
'' Is it worth it?''

I think yes.

After both my parents died, I inherited the family photo albums which go back to the 1920's. Quite often family members are asking for copies of particular photos and I'm happy to oblige, at least when I'm in Canada where the original albums are in a bank safe. I am often surprised by the quality of the photos taken in the village or city photographer's studio -you know the kind with Grandpa and Grandma all dressed up. Grandpa sitting on a chair flanked by a table with a vase of flowers on it and with Grandma standing behind him with her right hand on his shoulder. When I retire, I plan to work on some of the 30/50 most popular photos and share them with family members in a number of countries. My spouse, who hails from Asia has an even more interesting stash of photographs. Unfortunately, due to the humidity many are in bad shape and it will take some professional intervention to fix them.
 
I have taken to doing some books on blurb.com and giving them as gifts to my kids. I would imagine that most, if not all, originals (both film & digital) will eventually find their way into a garbage bin. In the meantime, I will continue to do books, have them printed, and do as many prints in my Epson as I can. I am also looking to get into some old negatives that I have never scanned and see which I would like to print or do a book on. I think my kids will keep books but not all the old files.
 
I have figured out what to do with my 120 negs....I'll put them in a box and stick it in a storage unit after I mark the box "property V. Maier".
 
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