Lengthy, but important...

[raid]

I download images from my cameras to some external drives at home, followed by downloading images from the external drives to the computer. Then I upload from the computer to smugmug and some of those get uploaded to RFF. I should be covered.

 

[Benjamin Marks]

I download images from my cameras to some external drives at home, followed by downloading images from the external drives to the computer. Then I upload from the computer to smugmug and some of those get uploaded to RFF. I should be covered.

I do what Raid does. (Smart fella!) 😉

I use Flickr and Smugmug to get collections of photos to clients for them to download. They are not, generally, for publication and I doubt that they are being stolen for general use. They are too event-specific, I think.

Ironically, I was (five minutes) ago, noodling between Lightroom CC and Lightroom Classic. I have a new laptop, which is finally powerful enough to do some editing and sorting when I travel. This is a huge bonus. But my general practice is to keep historical stuff backed up on HDD's and a master backup(s) in a safety deposit box. I don't do this because I think anyone will be interested in the pictures when I am gone. I do this because my images are the only thing, aside from my family, that I would grieve for if the house burnt down. Everything else can be replaced.

I tried a year of a cloud-based backup service. But when I finally, after months and months, got all of my images for that year uploaded, my "country DSL" speeds ensured that it would take years (quite literally) to download everything in the event of some HDD crash. For me, the cloud is impractical until fiber optics come to the hinterland.

There are versions of this problem all over the internet. I have, for instance, purchased a couple of movies off of Amazon that live on Amazon's servers (I could watch The Godfather series once a year for the rest of my life and be happy). But what happens to my digital rights purchase when Amazon merges or is forced out of business for some reason? I'm pretty sure that "copy" of my movies and my "right" to watch it will go "poof."

Bottom line: if it is important to you, exercise the greatest control practicable over it that you can. Your important books, your important movies, your music, your art. To hand someone else control over when and how you can access these things seems like folly to me, and always has. But hey, these are time/money tradeoffs for all of us.

BTW, the joy of a friend or family member who sees a forgotten photo of him- or herself from 30 years ago is priceless to me. And this is a pleasure I have experienced many times. I'm not putting the control of that set of emotions in Flickr's hands either.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Vague article. It is me or author?

Flickr is not archival storage to me.
It is to observe someone else photos. Helen Hill, Junku Nashimura.
It is to see full size example for one lens from thousands of users and in ten of thousands examples (a.k.a. pictures).
It is to see the uploads from museums and archives. Sometimes very small and not accessible other ways.
Does Flicks offered storage under previous owner and now? Why it is a problem then?

Yes, here is messy Google which auto archives and organizes images automatically on google cloud. You are doing absolutely nothing and Google does saves it all.
No idea how to control it, but saved copies are better than no copies.

Would I relay on Google photos? No. On Flickr as storage? No. They are outsourced or greedy morons (one is product of another one, BTW).

But it is disaster recovery anyway. Prints are not. They are hard copy.

The real challenge is not even described in this article, because author doesn't know it.
It is called MAM - Media Asset Management.

Best MAM is storage provider independent application.
This is how it works:
You are defining your own capitalization. It is like forest. Each tree is something.
People-family-kid-names. People-relatives-families-names.People-friends-families-names. One tree. Places-towns-streets-pubs another tree. Photo-cameras-lennses-filters one more tree. For sale-cameras-lenses-cars-furniture. One more tree.
You could search then kid, place, camera. You could find who else was on trip in this place. And which camera was in used. And if you already sold.

But MAM only works if you work on it. On tagging images and making catalogolization.
This is the hardest part with huge bonus.
The bonus is in photos. Once you have metadata written into photo files, it doesn't matter how they are organized as files and where they are stored.
It comes with second part of MAM. All you do is enabling your storage options and assess to it. Flickr, Google, your hard drives. For MAM it is just field in internal database with link address. Another database entry is image proxy.

This is the only way you could get pictures really organized. It includes your prints and negs. Again, it is your work to have prints in labeled boxes and labeled shelves.
This is how it worked in libraries and all you need to do is to be librarian.

Hard? Then take it easy. It is not asset management, not an asset, but just a pile....
And just with anything considered as an asset. If you leave your Bahama account unknown and then finally you are thrown in jail, how is your family and private joy are going access it? You didn't give the keys? Who is the stupid?

 

[aoresteen]

After the PhotoBucket fiasco last year I deleted every photo I had on PhotoBucket except one: PhotoBucket's place holder image extorting fees.

I do not have ANY images at a public "cloud" site. I have my own domain where I now store images that I share on various internet forums since Photobucket broke all my forum postings that had photos.

I have 4 copies of every digital image I keep (yes I delete the bad images!). Two separate data hard drives in my main PC (the OS has it's own boot drive), one copy on a data server in my house, and a fourth copy on a bug-out USB drive. I sync them once a month or so.

My film images are sorted by year in archival sleeves on 4x6 cards in file boxes and 90% I can not scan as they are medium format. If I bug out I can not take them with me. Such is life.

My bug-out USB drive has all important docs on it as well as the photos.

 

[farlymac]

I'm getting to that point in my life where I'm not worried about losing stuff. Except when I can't find something around here I just set down a couple hours ago.

I've close to 14,000 photos on Flickr. A lot of them are linked to various forums I belong to, either in separate postings or a link to the complete album. I keep every image in an album, as most of them tell a story, or some basic facts about the location they were taken at. I can sometimes remember better when I took a particular photo, so I know about how many pages back I have to go to get to the album it is in, instead of looking through all the "barn" photos, as an example.

I've been paying for years for my Pro account, and plan on doing so until I eventually pass on. If I know the time is near, I may pay ahead for ten years of storage. After that, it doesn't matter, I'll be even more irrelevant than the day I died. But it would be nice to all those who are constantly searching my camera repair series not to lose that knowledge just because I'm no longer around. Plus, I'll leave control of my Flickr account to my relatives, in case any of them would like to download some of the images.

Photography doesn't define me, but I do define my photography. It's mostly just stuff that pleases me, or that I practice at trying for a certain look for this or that photo. But a style? I'm too interested in different forms of photography to get pigeonholed into any one genre. And I'm past wanting to pursue a career as a professional. Plus, there are many more photos I haven't put on Flickr that were taken before this age of public digital display that at best only my relatives will be interested in after I'm gone.

If this place burned down tomorrow, and all my photos, negatives, prints, computer, CD's, SD cards, external drives, and photo gear went up in smoke, I'd just start all over again, like I've done before.

Permanence is so overrated.

PF

 

[Guth]

I happen to like using a camera like a machine gun and there's nothing wrong with it.

My kid would agree with you. He'll often set his iPhone camera on video mode and then pick 'n choose the individual frames he likes best as images to keep.

 

[Jerevan]

I think I'm going to have to write an article about why vernacular photography DOES matter, historically speaking, and write a guide on family or personal digital archiving and digital preservation. :bang:

Having worked with such stuff, I know how important it is - even though most people don't think it is. There is a lot of stuff in the most ordinary photo that in a decade or two will be of interest.

But what that interesting part is, is hard to know in beforehand. And writing down what/where/who makes the photographs much more valuable in a sense, knowing that the man in the photograph is uncle Bertie and there's old Jeeves, too.

I remember coming across an archive from a man who spent most of his life making ordindary photographs of his hometown (some 20000+negatives and slides). I suppose some people thought he was a bit odd, but looking back at a photo of the town square, made in 1973, it does give you a view what has changed since then - the clothes, cars, buildings, etc.

One does not need to be a hamster, but keeping a record of family and life and neighbourhood is pretty nice and who knows, maybe you'll be a Vivian Maier or a Disfarmer in due time. 🙂

 

[Bille]

My kid would agree with you. He'll often set his iPhone camera on video mode and then pick 'n choose the individual frames he likes best as images to keep.

Works well with 4K.

 

[FujiLove]

I have binders of negatives, boxes of prints, boxes of slides and prints in various other people's houses. My digital files (mostly scans) are in Lightroom which is backed-up to the cloud with everything else using Backblaze.

I was always under the impression that flickr and the like compressed files so much that they make a poor place to protect digital photographs.

 

[Out to Lunch]

Lengthy to the point of rambling. Flickr has contacted each and every Flickr customer informing them about the 2019 deal and advising them to download their +1000 pics if and when they don't want to subscribe. Those who will lose pictures will do so because they don't think it's worth their while keeping them.

 

[robert blu]

...
I remember coming across an archive from a man who spent most of his life making ordindary photographs of his hometown (some 20000+negatives and slides). I suppose some people thought he was a bit odd, but looking back at a photo of the town square, made in 1973, it does give you a view what has changed since then - the clothes, cars, buildings, etc.

A good point. I agree 100%.

robert

 

[PhotoGog]

Lengthy, but important...

Even Stalin did not live for ever. Why should your photos?

 

[bmattock]

My kid would agree with you. He'll often set his iPhone camera on video mode and then pick 'n choose the individual frames he likes best as images to keep.

I just get tired of isms and thou shalts. I do what I please and I won't be told my photography isn't valid because some crotchety old man says so. I can say that because I am also a crotchety old man.

 

[Yokosuka Mike]

And, when all is said and done... blah blah blah

What is a valued image? What is worth keeping?

If you love it hang it on a wall, otherwise,

Answer that for yourself.

Me, I don't care. I write my poems in the sand and watch the waves wash them away. And, I can always write more, and some will be even better than before.

Mike

 

[helen.HH]

Between Wars, Enviormental Disasters, Famine, and a throw away society
who the hell cares about saving some Photos ...

At the rate we are going there may be nothing of what we know of as Earth

oops did I say that ... 😱

 

[Yokosuka Mike]

Between Wars, Enviormental Disasters, Famine, and a throw away society
who the hell cares about saving some Photos ...

At the rate we are going there may be nothing of what we know of as Earth

oops did I say that ... 😱

Yes, you did say that. Say some more and add a picture or two, we're listening.

Good for you Helen!

All the best,
Mike

 

[kiemchacsu]

Lengthy, but important...

All of my photos are uploaded to Google photos.
While I really appreciate the ability to search anything from Google, I still keep my files locally in 2 hard drives.
If all above solutions dies one day, i am not so worried, as I print a family photo album annually, which I treasure most.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Dogman]

My photos are important to me. I have no online presence. No Facebook, Twitter or blog. I don't post photos on any photo sharing sites for many of the same reasons mentioned in the article. I do not try to market my photos. Few people actually see my pictures but that's okay with me. I take a picture because the subject, light or circumstances please me. I then download it to the computer, back it up on four different hard drives, print it on rag paper with pigment inks and store it in one of numerous archival storage boxes. No clouds involved. My negatives and prints from years past are also stored this way.

I don't consider photography a social activity or a financial pursuit. It's just something I do that gives me pleasure. When I'm gone, I expect it all to be landfill.

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

Fixed that for you. I happen to like using a camera like a machine gun and there's nothing wrong with it.

... as long as you have a way to find the "keepers" out of the burst.

I shoot bursts and brackets regularly, and with new camera tech (e.g. 30fps, you pick the keeper) it will become even more effective as a photo technique.

The "4K" button on my latest Point 'n Shoot forces me to pick. iPhone encourages, but will happily keep the whole burst.

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

As mere mortals, we are tied to physicality, however much we want to float freely in a binary space.

Great thought provoking line. Thanks!