Storing Stuff

[Downrigger]

I am a definite amateur. I make images for my own pleasure and take great enjoyment in trying to become better at it. Maybe someday, I'll sell a postcard to someone, who knows?

But, I am accumulating files of images in LR, some of which please me. I would like to have them as prints, stored in a manner I can review them as hardcopy evidence of (ok, small) technical and artistic successes.

In the old days, there were "albums" for this sort of thing, and I guess I could get some of those. I wonder if some of you have other ways you store your work so you can see it yourself and show it to others?

[Geoff F]

A few get printed and hung on my walls. A few get used in various projects by myself and other people/organisations.

And for general sharing with the world, I use one of the photo hosting sites. Which in a way is 'digital prints'.

P base is the one I use, but there are several other sites doing similar things. Some are free but there is a small charge with P base. You can have open or restricted access as required.

As an example, here are my freely available photo galleries http://pbase.com/crustacean

[GrahamS]

iPad & TV

[Downrigger]

Thanks Geoff - I'll look into places like pbase, though I'm not that ready to believe anyone else much cares to see my stuff (though I do post some here - that's for help).
And thanks Graham - I suppose your right. It's just that electronics seem so transient, compared to something you can pick up and hold. I've got photos of my grandparents when they were kids - I can't believe they'd exist anymore if they were stored on some faddish gizmo initially.

[DanK]

Mark,

I use Smugmug and have the site divided into publicly viewable sections and others that people can only find with a link--for family photos, etc. I also have a free Flickr site, primarily for groups. I also print what I can, but I am limited by wall space. You can get a good printer for very little, and once you have the hang of it (getting the hang of it takes a while), printing from LR is very easy and gives consistently good results.

As a substitute for albums of my own prints, I have been thinking about having a few photo books made, but I haven't done it yet. From my casual looking around, Adoramapix looks like an appealing option for that. I am probably going to do that for some of my bug shots, which my wife really does not want on the walls.

Dan

[Geoff F]

I do some photo restoration, improvement and storage for my local history society. And my first question is always, 'Do you have the negative'?

Negatives usually last better than prints. Although those glass plates can be a problem!

Print life depends on the paper quality as well as the storage conditions. Some modern prints on cheap paper will start to fade and discolour after a couple of years, particularly if exposed to strong light.

There are long life inks and papers which are supposed to last at least 100 years; but nobody knows if this really will happen.

Digital storage is also somewhat uncertain. Hard disc drives do fail. Nobody knows the life of a DVD.

But many public companies and local authorities are storing all their records on disc now, instead of paper or microfilm. Long term storage of discs should be inside those individual plastic containers and under 'normal conditions'.

And never use those discs unless absolutely necessary to avoid any scratching etc.

[GrahamS]

I've got photos of my grandparents when they were kids - I can't believe they'd exist anymore if they were stored on some faddish gizmo initially.

Silver gelatin prints are the only guaranteed archival medium. Pictures of you taken by your grand children will not exist in 100 years time unless they are printed on archival media. Who can guarantee that your descendants will have the foresight to replicate digital images to current file formats and storage media whenever necessary in the future? Chances are your photos will disappear into oblivion on some failed solid state memory chip sometime in the future unless they are printed out as archival prints.

[royphot]

I agree that Black & White images are probably the best bet for archive purposes, but even then only if they were properly developed, properly fixed and properly washed. If being saved as prints, then the quality and type of the paper is also very important, as is whatever is being used to contain them. If being saved as negatives, darkness is vital and atmospheric pollution must be protected against, and yet again the filing material is also critical.

Taking all the above into consideration it seems fairly unlikely that very much of what us "average" photographers have produced will survive.

I stopped making wet process Black & White prints in the early 70s, so none of my output since then has a chance, but I don't suppose I will be around to worry about it.

Roy

[DanK]

Mark,

I think we have two different threads here. I was responding to your initial post about having an easy way to review and share images, like old-fashioned albums. The second thread is about archival storage.

Old fashioned albums are definitely not archival. I have recently had reason to scan in old photos from albums I had not looked at for 20 years or so, and the degradation of the color prints ranged from modest to awful. And not all of the black and white images were pristine either, although they were on average in far better condition.

Like Roy, I gave up wet process black and white printing decades ago. I think the best bet now is to have multiple digital copies. At a later date, it might be necessary to transfer them to a different storage medium, but that would be trivial. A more serious problem will arise if the file formats are no longer readable because of technological changes. However, with billions of files out in the ether and on hard drives now, I think it likely that if formats change, someone will sell a solution.

Meantime, I bought myself a better scanner and will try to find time to scan some of the old color prints and repair them as well as I can, before they become completely useless. The problem is time--it is easy to do this for a few dozen images, but I have hundreds upon hundreds.

Dan

[Mike Buckley]

Consider printing your images in books. Their advantages:

1) Easy storage
2) Easy presentation
3) Easy annotation on the same page as the photo or in an appendix
4) Using an index makes it easy to locate photos of a particular subject, location, etc.
5) Relatively low cost, especially considering the above four advantages
6) Easy to order another copy (if it becomes damaged due to a coffee spill or the like)
7) Makes a great gift

I have used Blurb for my two most recent projects and, though I haven't yet received the second book, find books to be immensely satisfying.

I notice that you are using Lightroom. Versions 4 and 5 allow you to automatically upload a project created in its Book module to Blurb. Blurb regularly runs 20%-off sales, so you could wait for one of those. I placed an order a few days ago using a 35% discount, which is unusual. The first Blurb order uploaded through Lightroom 5 provides a 25% discount. (I don't know about version 4.)

At non-sale pricing, one 8 x 10 softcover book with their "premium lustre" pages and 156 pages costs $56.00 plus shipping. At one image per page, that's $0.36 per 6 1/2" x 8" image or 8" x 10" image printed on an 8" x 10" page. (Multiple images per page and two-page spreads are also possible.) A smaller size using "standard" paper would be less expensive.

If you're interested in more detail about using Blurb, review this thread and this thread.

[LocalHero1953]

Since spending 2 years scanning all my old prints and negatives, including family prints going back to C19, I came to a number of conclusions:
- Yep, old B&W prints were great for archiving. I was astonished at the detail I could scan from tiny contact prints.
- But as I was the only one in the family with the prints, they'd have been lost if the house had burnt down. Four DVDs held the entire collection, and each member of my closest family now has a set. Just as important, each of my kids also now has their own copy of the family records; this is not possible without digital data.
- Colour prints and negatives deteriorate. OK, if my archiving had been better, temperature controlled, etc, maybe they'd have lasted longer, but such conditions cannot be guaranteed after you pass your possessions to others.
- The excellent colour prints from my epson inkjet I put up on the wall about 5 or 6 years ago have faded badly. The inks were dye inks, and the paper was epson standard stuff. I'll be changing to a pigment ink printer soon, and better paper, and I'll see if that lasts longer.
The only firm lessons I have drawn from all this is that multiple archives, spread around the family as well as on different media offer the best chance of your shots being around for someone to see them as you shot them in 100 years time, if that's what you want. And the shots that are most likely to be readable in 100 years (if they haven't been destroyed or lost) will be on high quality archival prints - because you don't need an app, reader or driver for the Mk 1 Eyeball!

[rpcrowe]

I also use smugmug as my primary image storage and display site (http://rpcrowe.smugmug.com/Pets/MALT...RNIA/i-x9HN2FM ).

My wife has been posting many of my dog rescue images on our Maltese Rescue California Facebook site
( https://www.facebook.com/pages/Malte...23602581117792 ).

I consider smugmug a great way to store and share images. It is not terribly expensive...

Additionally, I have a Nook HD+ ( http://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/nook...ble/1110060512 ) on which I installed Pixie Reef ( www.pixiereef.com ) as my image viewer. I have my images separated into categories or galleries. I use this on a table at our dog rescue events with a slideshow of our rescue images continuously running. The neat thing about the Nook HD+ is that it is relatively inexpensive; is quite portable; has excellent image quality; is light in weight; has a decent size (9-inch) screen; and runs quite a while on a charged battery and has extended memory capability using SD cards. The other aspect of the Nook HS+ that I like is the corner attachment capability. At dog rescue events, I use a very lightweight cable that secures the Nook to the table on which it is located. That way it doesn't wander off with someone who wants it more than I do.

The Nook HD+ is also a very easy and professional way to share photos with another person or group. However, I would expect that many other tablets would work equally well...

[Downrigger]

Thanks, everyone, for lots of information and suggestions - I'll look into Smugmug and Pbase, consider making some books, and am sobered by the info on degradation of color. My "art" will not be very important in due time, but the archival value of the family photos is significant. Interesting that the last two millenia seem to have witnessed a decline (or at least not increase) in the durability of information.