This is a photo of my Great GrandFather, William Barkman. This photo was taken in 1935 when he was the Sheriff of Jackson County Indiana. The reason I have it today is because it was printed out and saved. The original is just as clear and sharp as the day it was made, that was 80 years ago.
The photographs I take today are stored as electronic bits of information on internal, and external hard drives, cd’s, thumb drives, SD cards and in various cloud accounts. Current technology is in a constant state of change which will be difficult or impossible to access in the future, remember 5 1/4 floppy disks? There is also no guarantee that those companies operating the cloud storage will be around in 10, 20, 50 years from now.
I am confident that photos which have been printed out and properly stored will be around for years to come, as proven by my Great Grandfathers 80-year-old photo.
I would encourage you to print your photos so that your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be able to pull out the family album and look back and remember.
Tim Jeffers
I print about 100 pics quarterly and keep a scrapbook for each year, so family can look through tangible items. People think just because their photos EXIST on their hard drives that people can view them, but the reality is that they don’t. I know that I look through photo albums all the time, new and old. It makes me happy.
I like the idea of printing them out quarterly. Thank you for your comment!
wise words….
have a large number of medium format negatives I need to get into and print. hopefully soon.
nice website and photos!
Thank you!