"We photograph the wrong things"

[Bob Michaels]

Do not forget that making the right photos at the right time will not suffice.

One must edit to a manageable number of images, identify them, and create some format will will be usable many years down the road.

Years later it will be useless to have about a million unidentified images on a hard disk drive or DVD. Anyone have boxes and boxes containing every transparency you shot for many years? Anyone have data stored on 5 1/4" floppies?

Think about how useful the top 1/4% of your images would be compared to all of them.
Think about how useless those images will be when they are in technically obsolete format that can no longer be viewed.

 

[Archiver]

Do not forget that making the right photos at the right time will not suffice.

One must edit to a manageable number of images, identify them, and create some format will will be usable many years down the road.

Years later it will be useless to have about a million unidentified images on a hard disk drive or DVD. Anyone have boxes and boxes containing every transparency you shot for many years? Anyone have data stored on 5 1/4" floppies?

This is very pertinent. All of my film is printed and in albums, and I strive to write dates, places and descriptions beside each picture.

My digital files are regularly migrated to bigger and better harddrives, and are organized by years, with subfolders for places and people.

I do have data on old floppy discs, and surprisingly, there is a computer that still reads them. But I have yet to migrate that data across. That's another subproject, along with scanning and cataloguing my grandmother's photo albums. As it is, I'm already considered the record keeper in the family.

 

[Fjäll]

We have found a photographers extensive documentation of the streets of my neighborhood through the 50s. A lot had changed and things are changing even faster. It inspired me to do the same thing but through my decade. Also with a Rolleiflex.

A lot of people appreciate this work found recently and I think it's about time we make another volume.

The old is lost with the generations, but not if it's documented. My main excuse to acquire fancy gear and shoot film is that my documentation will be of high quality and not lost or incompatible because of outdated digital technology.

 

[robert blu]

Do not forget that making the right photos at the right time will not suffice.

One must edit to a manageable number of images, identify them, and create some format will will be usable many years down the road.

Years later it will be useless to have about a million unidentified images on a hard disk drive or DVD. Anyone have boxes and boxes containing every transparency you shot for many years? Anyone have data stored on 5 1/4" floppies?

Think about how useful the top 1/4% of your images would be compared to all of them.
Think about how useless those images will be when they are in technically obsolete format that can no longer be viewed.

A very interested post which reflects my "recent" way of thinking, after having noticed how many photos, negatives or files I have that are stored anywhere in boxes, in hard disk or wherever it happens they are. Sometimes they are a surprise for myself as well!

Therefore I started a process to catalog and print postcard size 10/12 pictures for each year of my photo activity. Selection is based on emotion, events, subject or ...something else. Not necessary they to be the "best" pictures.

robert

 

[Richard G]

Very interesting thread. Thanks. I am wary of documenting my workplace, but I did once sneak a photograph of our neuropathologist slicing a post mortem brain, and this was later published in his obituary in our journal. I have taken lots of abstract sort of photographs in and around work, but not many at all of people. But I have a wonderful photo of a ward round near my office with the chief of my specialty donning a gown. He has now retired due to illness.

Along with all the photographs of my children I have long kept a book of all their deep and amusing questions or observations. As soon as they say it I whip the leatherbound notebook off the shelf and write it down. It is hilarious reading through these years later. If they are not recorded very quickly they are usually lost forever.

 

[FujiLove]

I completely agree with the original post, in that some of my most treasured photos would be the least interesting to anyone else. They are mundane, but capture something that's important only to me. I was brutally reminded of this earlier in the year when our dog fell ill and we were facing the prospect of having to end her life. Thankfully she recovered, but it made me look at things a little differently and I now take a lot more photos of her particularly in her more playful and happy moments. And obviously, these are the tedious 'dog shots' that everyone hates! I've tried to take more photos in general since then, but probably nowhere near enough.

I'm not a fan of digital photography in general and social media type photography more specifically, but maybe it will solve this problem for younger people? Maybe they will have photos of all the things that many of us have lost? I hope so, but at the same time I also think some things are better left to our imaginations and fading memories.

 

[charjohncarter]

I found this recently and thought the same thing: why didn't I take more pictures like this if for nobody else but me.

My apartment in 1965:

1965-6 slides by John Carter, on Flickr

 

[Godfrey]

"We don't photograph the right things."

Sometimes we do. Sometimes we don't.

With experience and time, hopefully we learn and concentrate more on the things we ought to.

G

 

[jesse1dog]

Interesting thread.
When we moved into this old house just over 20 years ago we knew we would be making changes. My wife was instructed to take pictures of every room before the furniture moved in - and we have those in album. Every major change we made, we have taken photos. What is fascinating is how the garden has changed through those years.
What we didn't do was take photos of every room and space in the house we left - we have some garden photos but just a couple of interiors.
A case of opportunities taken and missed.

 

[Archiver]

I completely agree with the original post, in that some of my most treasured photos would be the least interesting to anyone else. They are mundane, but capture something that's important only to me. I was brutally reminded of this earlier in the year when our dog fell ill and we were facing the prospect of having to end her life. Thankfully she recovered, but it made me look at things a little differently and I now take a lot more photos of her particularly in her more playful and happy moments. And obviously, these are the tedious 'dog shots' that everyone hates! I've tried to take more photos in general since then, but probably nowhere near enough.

I'm not a fan of digital photography in general and social media type photography more specifically, but maybe it will solve this problem for younger people? Maybe they will have photos of all the things that many of us have lost? I hope so, but at the same time I also think some things are better left to our imaginations and fading memories.

I used to go out with a woman who owned a couple of dogs, and I was forever taking photos of everything, dogs included. When one dog passed away, it was an easy matter to collect the dozens of dog portraits, dog play times, and dog-interacting-with-people images. She wasn't a huge fan of my constant photography, but she absolutely appreciated the collection of images of her dog. She even had a number of them printed and set in a large frame, hung above the box of his ashes.

If social media images are anything to go by, people will have hundreds of photos of themselves in locations, but not that many of the locations themselves. It's the same issue I've noticed when looking at family photos. There are loads of pictures of people, and hardly any of places, unless they made dedicated holiday or travel albums.

Unfortunately, Mum's side were not huge photo takers, so there are the usual posed environmental portraits outside houses, landmarks and other things. Few photos exist of places. Barely anything has dates. And the photos are all in a certain time period, and stop.

Dad's side is a different story. My paternal grandfather was an keen snapshooter, and had a variety of cameras including a Pentax Spotmatic and an Olympux XA, which I am told he carried everywhere. At family gatherings, he could burn through a roll or two of film and get prints from the developers that evening. I'm itching to get into those!

 

[seany65]

I have enough trouble photographing anything as I have trouble 'seeing the picture' first. If I 'see a picture', it's usually when I've not got a camera with me. If I see one when I've got a camera I often don't take the pic. I think it's partly due to not having a lot of money to pay for the processing, so I end up being 'too careful' about whether to take a pic or not.

Then there's the 'faffing about' I do getting ready to press the button, Ioften miss the pic. This is from a lack of confidence.

Because of this, I missed getting a pic of the Blackpool donkeys as they were were being walked through the streets to the beach. The pic may not have been good, but it would've been a little unusual.

 

[Archiver]

I have enough trouble photographing anything as I have trouble 'seeing the picture' first. If I 'see a picture', it's usually when I've not got a camera with me. If I see one when I've got a camera I often don't take the pic. I think it's partly due to not having a lot of money to pay for the processing, so I end up being 'too careful' about whether to take a pic or not.

Then there's the 'faffing about' I do getting ready to press the button, Ioften miss the pic. This is from a lack of confidence.

Because of this, I missed getting a pic of the Blackpool donkeys as they were were being walked through the streets to the beach. The pic may not have been good, but it would've been a little unusual.

Sounds like it would have been a fun image.

While it depends on the kinds of images that you think are 'photo worthy', if you have a digital camera or even a smartphone, you can take pictures without any fear of wasting money or faffing about. You can take a photo of just about anything in the full confidence that if it's not good, it didn't cost you a thing. And if the image turns out well, it was worth the effort.

This may sound a little excessive, but I've developed the habit of photographing my food, my bed in the morning, and random times during the day, whatever i happen to be doing. This gives me a visual diary of what I've done in the day, and this ramps up if I'm going somewhere not in the usual routine. As I look back over the years, I can see changes in the places I've gone, the people I've seen, the work I've done. Not only the changes in subject, but in the subjects themselves.

Photos show me shops that used to be there, but aren't any longer. This habit allowed me to put together a chronological collection of images of a wonderful friend who unexpected passed away a couple of years ago. I'd never have those images if I was worried about taking a bad picture; the only bad picture is the one you didn't get.