What’s Gonna Happen to Your Photographs?

Bill Clark

Bill Clark

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I’m already getting rid, more bluntly, throwing away many negatives and prints. A friend of mine did the same. He had the task of going through his parents prints and negatives, most of them ended up in the trash. He said, “most of the people in the photographs I didn’t know!”

Here is another person I know and this is her quote that’s on facebook”

“My next project: sifting through these 6 boxes of old photos and photo albums - a project I have been putting off for some time. Chances are much will end up in the trash, but I will take digital photos of more important ones to retain. I think I'll put on a movie while doing it. And maybe enjoy a glass of wine....”

Sad isn’t it? Especially those of us who like photography.

What about you? Any editing going on with your stash of photos and negatives?
 
I would never throw away a single frame, it's like erasing a part of history. And there is no guarantee that digital copies will survive more than a few decades. Keeping the physical medium is the best chance to preserve photographic records.
 
I’ve had to throw whole peoples lives in the dumpster.

Family never came or never cared.

Hardest part of my job!

Against policy to save anything....

Personally, I have a VERY large archive of vintage prints, slides, negatives, and glass plates I’ve rescued over the years. The hope is to compile them into a large stock photo site one day.

It makes me a little ill to think people are tossing away these memories on purpose. It’s your History! Once it’s gone, you can never get it back!
 
Family never came or never cared.
Click to expand...

Same story for me. I have quite a few external hard drives with client photographs. No one seems to want them or care. It must be the mind set of people. Look at them once then go on with their lives.
 
I had tens of thousands of negatives and slides from 50 years of shooting professionally. Journalism and documentary stuff. Tried giving them away to area libraries, museums, etc., but none of them wanted to manage and store that quantity of area photographic history. So, 10 or 12 years ago I burned them all. The stacks of hard drives left will be easy for whoever has to deal with my stuff after I die to toss in the dumpster, so I don't worry about that anymore.

With billions of photos a year being uploaded to the internet, I don't think folks place much value on them anymore. Modern times.
 
I like photography, but I do not take it in huge numbers.
Most of my photos are done strictly for me. To see how it looks like on photo.
Some of them were requested, send to.
For family pictures we have albums and files in copies
I also give photos to people close to me.
I'd rather have dozen of photos people find to be worth of keeping, than boxes of prints and negatives nobody needs.
 
"What’s Gonna Happen to Your Photographs?"

After physical death I don't think I will be in a position to worry about the trivialities of my former life on the earth plane .
 
“After physical death I don't think I will be in a position to worry about the trivialities of my former life on the earth plane.”

Agree.

But I hope a few are passed on to family.
 
Making the same decisions now. Just closed one of our weekly newspapers and tossed 30 years of negatives. Nobody wanted them. I still have all the negatives I shot for publication, local fire companies, police departments, and for myself. I will turn 74 in March and must decide what will become of them as well.
 
JP Owens said:
I had tens of thousands of negatives and slides from 50 years of shooting professionally. Journalism and documentary stuff. Tried giving them away to area libraries, museums, etc., but none of them wanted to manage and store that quantity of area photographic history. So, 10 or 12 years ago I burned them all. The stacks of hard drives left will be easy for whoever has to deal with my stuff after I die to toss in the dumpster, so I don't worry about that anymore.

With billions of photos a year being uploaded to the internet, I don't think folks place much value on them anymore. Modern times.
Click to expand...

It's sad to think that so much photography will vanish. Museums and universities only want collections that arrive along with a six-figure check to help handle management and scholarship around a collection. Even within Universities they have trouble managing their own collections built by staff photographers like me. I shudder at the number of prints and negatives that have been disposed of over the years.

When I die I suspect my work will live a short time in one of the kid's closet or attic and then eventually go to the landfill. The only photographic evidence of mine will be those images in private collections and museums that own a print. Perhaps the best chance for long term survival is on the internet...
 
Grandkids

Grandkids

My hope is to interest one of my grandkids in photography and curating my archive of photos and negs. At this point my own kids are too busy with their families and work to get involved in such a project. As pointed out by others, I too have albums of photos from my parents and in-laws which have countless photos of unknown people - what a pity that nobody labeled them. My negs at least have labels that tell who is in them by roll, but not by frame number.
 
Ko.Fe. said:
I like photography, but I do not take it in huge numbers.
Most of my photos are done strictly for me. To see how it looks like on photo.
Some of them were requested, send to.
For family pictures we have albums and files in copies
I also give photos to people close to me.
I'd rather have dozen of photos people find to be worth of keeping, than boxes of prints and negatives nobody needs.
Click to expand...

I think most people underestimate the cost of sifting through negatives. If you made contact sheets it might be easier, but still a big job. Museums and Universities don’t want these archives without the accompanying cheque because they simply don’t have the money to deal with it. Unless you are a famous photographer or a salesperson decides you’ll be the next Vivian Maier then unfortunately they are of little use.

I subscribe to Ko.Fe’s plan. I shoot for me, five photos to friends and family members as they request, and print select photos. My family are much more likely to look through a box of photos compared to a box of negatives or a few hard drives of files once I’m gone. I wouldn’t with the alternatives on anyone.
 
I’m thinking that, with my digital files, I’ll leave it to my kids to decide. External hard drives are so cheap now. My file system works like this with my Apple computers:

Folder for year
Underneath year folder one for each month. Folders Labeled 01 January, 02 February and so on. Then the folders would appear in numerical order. If I didn’t use the number for each month it would alpha sort therefore the months wouldn’t be in correct sequence.

Underneath each month the events listed. With each event, a folder for RAW files and a folder for JPEGS.

When I had my business, if a client needed a file, all I needed to know is the year and month the photo was made.
 
There is only one trick to this: show people your photos now. A side effect of our complicated wiring is that we think other people are interested in what we do. They're not. Unless you show them.
 
Well, if someone is interested, they will live on... if not, they will die with me. IF you are only making family photos, the best is to truly break it down to the best of the best and make books. If you are an artist, it’s not up to you if your work survives.
 
There will be descendants who will curse you if you throw them away. I went through boxes of my late dad’s photos recently that my mom was going to throw away. There are tons of fantastic photos, many of good artistic and documentary value, on wonderful films such a Kodachrome that are gone, and they mean the world to me to have them. Even simple street snaps from decades ago are fascinating because of the nostalgia value of colors, styles, etc., and that goes even for many of the great photographers of the last two centuries, some of whose work became great only after it became nostalgic. In 100 years a great grandchild interested in family history or genealogy might love nothing more than to see some of your everyday snaps. I so wish more records existed of my grandparents when they were young, or any record at all of my great grandparents and prior generations, or even of the long-gone city and countryscapes where they lived.

Even their travel photos in countries that don’t exist anymore. It’s just crazy to me to throw this stuff away.

Even though my dad’s film work is large, it’s small compared to what many people shoot digitally in a couple of months or less, so why not just find a box and store them?
 
Kai-san said:
I would never throw away a single frame, it's like erasing a part of history. And there is no guarantee that digital copies will survive more than a few decades. Keeping the physical medium is the best chance to preserve photographic records.
Click to expand...

Tak Kai, I feel the same.
 
Fresh start

Fresh start

All my photos, slides and negatives were destroyed when my place flooded in Superstorm Sandy.

I'm a little sad, but mostly about loss of the irreplaceable family photos.

Chris
 
Slide film has been much easier to organize for me. It is with the help of a Kodak Carousel projector with circular slide trays with many holding 80 sludes and some 140. They go back to the 1960’s. I still have the projector and I bought a few extra bulbs just in case they become hard to find. DEK is the bulb.

The nice feature of the carousel trays is each one is in a box with lines on one edge outside to mark the contents. Inside is a heavy sheet of paper with numbers and line to give a brief description of each slide. They fit on a shelf in the library.

Found this on Amazon:


https://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&k...036435099:kwd-22790571&ref=pd_sl_4ipegsvsbh_e

This also looks interesting:

https://www.amazon.com/DIGITNOW-Neg...3810&sr=8-6&keywords=kodak+carousel+projector
 
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