Storage

[Bill Pierce]

While I hope other folks jump into this thread, it’s not so much a discussion as it is some observations on something I learned on this last trip. Museums and other photographic organizations are beginning to store images digitally. These can be scans of prints, negatives or transparencies in their collections or images from digital cameras. For the most part these digital files will be stored on hard drives. Solid state drives are still too pricey for many folks storing large volumes of images. And folks have realized that CD and DVD’s have a limited lifetime.

Sadly a few of them don’t realize that hard drives and even SSD’s have a limited lifetime. The mechanical components of hard drives can obviously fail, but the digital images themselves can decay over time. Even the hardy SSD’s with no mechanical parts have a limit on the number of searches they can perform (although that is a very large number). In other words, there is no guarantee against failure and the loss of the stored images.

The reason we store digitally is that we can make many copies and copies of copies and there will be no loss of quality, not something that was true when you made copy negatives and duplicates on film. The value of digital storage comes from the fact that you can make multiple copies so that when one fails you have an identical back up. And before age effects the stored images, you can transfer the files to new media.

I think most photographers know that and keep two back ups at home and one off site - and sometimes add cloud storage. Why a few organizations think that one set of digital files is OK, I don’t know. Perhaps it is because those folks aren’t photographers.

 

[ptpdprinter]

Surely there are acknowledged best practices for museums.

 

[Bill Pierce]

Surely there are acknowledged best practices for museums.

There is such a huge range of organizations that collect images that I am not amazed that a little time will have to pass before everybody is up to steam. But there are many organizations already there. For example, the Houston Museum's photographic digital archiving is state of the art at both the equipment and personnel level. It is, in essence, a department within a department - and a rather good one at that.

 

[Dan Daniel]

Having worked in a photo archive, I know that the standard setter is the Library of Congress, and any decent museum or archive will be fully in line with their standards to the best of their staff and equipment budget limits.


https://loc.gov/preservation/digital/

 

[Bill Clark]

So much information is kept in electronic format now. I believe it’s pretty darn reliable now. It’s the way it is. I decided to go electronic years ago. Part of the change to digital wih photography. I did keep duplicates of files on seperate external hard drives. It didn’t worry me then and it doesn’t worry me now.

Even the two accounts I have most of my investments are completely electronic. I don’t print confirms anymore of activity.

My wife is a tax accountant for a firm HQ in Minneapolis. She said that once the work is complete, it is all electronic with all work papers shredded. It’s actually safer if you can believe that.

Like it or not that’s the way the world is turning now.

 

[Bob Michaels]

I believe too many have their files backed up with redundancy or triple redundancy so they can never be lost. Yet the few hundred really worthwhile images are buried in hundreds of thousands of others so it is damn near impossible to find the good ones.

I can foresee times in the future where people ask if anyone remembers the old software program named "Lightroom" which contained the key to separate those relatively few significant images from that huge volume someone shot over their career.

Historically the methodology of archiving significant images automatically separated the wheat from the chaff. Today we have the technology of archiving everything we ever did with no distinction. I can see a time in the future when we and others wish only 1% of what we did was saved and the rest scrapped. Anyone who has looked at a closet full of boxes of 35mm slides already has experienced that.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Absolutely nothing will lasts without maintenance to preserve the image.
Walker Evans' American Photographs (plates) has to be resorted and enhanced.

BTW, looking at some of periodically open to general public expositions at AGO, makes me think they are not only not photographers, but kinky exhibitionists.

 

[Bill Pierce]

I believe too many have their files backed up with redundancy or triple redundancy so they can never be lost. Yet the few hundred really worthwhile images are buried in hundreds of thousands of others so it is damn near impossible to find the good ones. ...

Historically the methodology of archiving significant images automatically separated the wheat from the chaff. Today we have the technology of archiving everything we ever did with no distinction. I can see a time in the future when we and others wish only 1% of what we did was saved and the rest scrapped. Anyone who has looked at a closet full of boxes of 35mm slides already has experienced that.

I think that is one of the reasons to make prints of your good stuff.

 

[Tim Murphy]

Whew, I'm safe then!

Whew, I'm safe then!

I think that is one of the reasons to make prints of your good stuff.

Dear Bill,

None of my stuff is good so what's the harm in it vaporizing?

I fart around and have fun. I don't ask for anything beyond that.

Regards,

Tim Murphy

Harrisburg, PA 🙂

 

[Bill Pierce]

Having worked in a photo archive, I know that the standard setter is the Library of Congress, and any decent museum or archive will be fully in line with their standards to the best of their staff and equipment budget limits.

https://loc.gov/preservation/digital/

Dan, the problem is that there are many archives where the primary interest is not photography, but rather the subject of the photographs in the collection or occasionally the people that took the photographs. These are not museums, but well intentioned folks who don't have the information that most of us who are involved with photography take for granted. And that's what I became aware of on this last trip.

 

[Bill Pierce]

Dear Bill,

None of my stuff is good so what's the harm in it vaporizing?

I fart around and have fun. I don't ask for anything beyond that.

Regards,

Tim Murphy

Harrisburg, PA 🙂

If you're like me, you have some family and friends pictures of dubious quality that family and friends love because it's pictures of them. They are going to be really annoyed when your pictures of them vaporize.

 

[ColSebastianMoran]

For ordinary humans (not museums):

- Have two copies, in different physical locations (e.g. safe deposit box)

- Shift to new (probably larger) hard drive every three years. Discard old ones before they fail.

 

[Tim Murphy]

That's why i took all the important pictures before digital

That's why i took all the important pictures before digital

If you're like me, you have some family and friends pictures of dubious quality that family and friends love because it's pictures of them. They are going to be really annoyed when your pictures of them vaporize.

Dear Bill,

I have negatives that matter, but when the time comes they won't matter either.

My Mom and Dad will both be 80 this year. For at least 35 years I have been begging my Mother to sit down with me and write some names on the backs of the thousands of saved photographs she has in boxes. So far nothing has happened to fulfill my requests.

I'm OK with that. Mom has her memories, my Dad has his, and I have mine.

It is what it is.

Regards,

Tim Murphy

Harrisburg, PA 🙂

 

[K14]

Let's take step back to the analogue age folks. If cared properly vinyl has the best life span of hundreds is not thousands of years. I played 100 year old vinyl shellac records on my mother Victrola in the late 80's that sounded like a live performance. Vinyl would make great storage for photos.

For that matter let's get back to real analogue photography, Kodachrome. 😀

 

[Dogman]

While it is possible--even likely--that most of our photos will end up in a landfill, we really should try to preserve them. Don't underestimate the value of your photos. In 100 years they will be priceless as a means of reference for what is today. Even family photos and vacation snapshots will be valuable. If we don't preserve images of the mundane things that go on in our daily lives history will be incomplete for the future historian.

I don't save everything I shoot and I don't shoot hundreds of images of each subject. Being a relentless editor of my own work, I dump most of the files immediately after downloading and inspecting. I've been backing up my photos on portable hard drives for several years. Ever so often I add a new drive or two and copy everything again. Recently SSDs have been coming down in price so I've started to move in that direction. I still can't figure out a way to store some of these drives off site and still be able to keep them convenient yet accessible for further backing up.

Printing is really a great method of archiving. At one time, it was silver gelatin but today it is archival inkjet. I choose what I consider my best photos for this purpose. I use matte art papers and pigment inks and I store them in archival museum boxes. Nothing elaborate--most photos are simply printed full frame on 8.5x11 inch paper. A few are printed larger for display but the main print archive is just these small prints. On each photo I write the place and month and any other information that seems relevant. Having been faced with boxes of photos my parents and other relatives left behind with no clue as to who or what was pictured, I know the frustration of trying to identify anonymous photographs. Anyway, prints don't need compatible software or USB cables to access. Pretty nifty concept.

 

[Rob-F]

Bill, thanks for reminding us to review our storage and update where needed! I do keep an external disk drive on the iMac, and a smaller one for one of my MacBooks, but they are getting old, and I should replace them and get one for my latest MacBook as well.

I think the point about not storing every last shot we ever took really makes sense. It just makes it harder to store and retrieve the good ones. I do edit, but I think I will go back through and weed out the stuff I really don't need. Old test shots, pictures I took just to be taking a picture, and extra shots of the same thing that were not quite as good, can all go!

I have old shots I stored on CD/DVD disks I had already forgotten about. My newest MacBook doesn't even have a drive to put them in. And that's another storage issue. What if the DVDs last forever, but there's no way to use them?

 

[ptpdprinter]

I save my keepers (the files I print) as tifs in a separate folder. I back up my entire system to a couple of 2.5" external hard drives. I could probably back up all my keepers on a SD card.

 

[Out to Lunch]

Sooner than later, the entire 'storage' infrastructure will change, again.

 

[kkdanamatt]

Free cloud storage services frequently change their rules or go out of business.
I've had several services disappear completely after they have warned me that I'd better move my files elsewhere.
Some "free" cloud services don't store full-sized images for free. Instead, they offer access to compressed images, or full-sized images for additional fees.

I switched a couple of years ago to Solid State Hard Drives, which are the safest and least expensive method for my photo storage purposes.

 

[RichC]

Digital archiving is as good as archiving physical records like papers and photographic prints - but as Bill says, most people and organisations don't do it or do it badly. As pointed out, not only can files corrupt and devices fail or become obsolete but finding files among perhaps several thousand can be difficult, perhaps impossible - assuming you even know what you're looking for or at.

How many of us who intend our images (perhaps digital family snaps) to have a life after us have actually made plans and put them into effect? Personally, I've organised the files that others may want or need, and with my will there's instruction pointing to a certain Word file on my PC that explains my filing system and what and where files are, logins, important websites, etc.

So, that's the organisation sorted.

I also have a robust backup system in place that runs automatically without intervention from me. I use internal and external drives for multiple duplicate back-ups, replacing drives as and when they fail.

I've avoided DVDs, as they are are unreliable and will degrade after some years (even the archival ones). However, I have recently started using them because the new(ish) M-Disc DVDs are good for 1000 years! Essentially, you're using a laser to engrave rock! See here if you want to know more. They're not expensive but you do need a compatible DVD burner. They can be read most DVD drives.

M-Disc has changed how I archive my photos, now that I have permanent media. I now burn a set of photos onto a DVD disc,* and make A4-size prints of them, together with print of thumbnails and file names and a print-out of text describing what the photos show (all on archival paper); all this is placed in an archival cardboard portfolio box. These boxes are kept with my important stuff, so can't be missed when people eventually go throughout my stuff!

_______
*JPG and TIFF of each photo, as both formats are likely to be readable for decades hence owing to their ubiquity; use two formats is simply a fail safe. DVDs may of course become obsolete, as may Windows/Mac/Linux systems needed to read them: I'll have to replace them if that happens. If a descendant many years in the future happens to find a dusty DVD of mine, I'm sure they can read it if they really want to: after all, we can still listen to wax cylinders and read computer punch cards with some effort.