One of Tim Grey’s topic at last night’s ASPP meeting was about the long term storage of images. How do we know that images today will be readable in 50 years?
"They won’t be," is Tim’s short answer to that dilemma. "How many of you expect that a computer you buy in five years will have a CD reader in it?" Only a few hands lifted. "How many of you today own a computer without a floppy drive?" About a third of the audience.
Tim’s solution? Back-up to the fullest extent possible now (Tim likes hard drives, multiple sets in different locations). And plan to migrate your archive over your lifetime to the currently available standard.
We are so captivated with the fugitive nature of digital that we forget that the same issue applies in the analog world. Here is a case example.
The Syracuse Cultural Workers produces a lovely series of calendars, and they want one of my ANWR images for next year’s Peace Calendar. I spent a summer in ANWR 20 years ago. You can read my memoir and see photos here. I shot everything on Kodachrome 64, the state of the art of that era.
I started work on their selection this afternoon, and was alarmed at the deterioration of the film. They’re in archival slide pages in a metal file cabinet. But they’re in the Kodak paper mounts, and who knows what’s in those. It took most of the afternoon, applying a lot of what I learned from Barry Haynes last week, to revive the image. If I were more experienced there would probably be a lot more I could do, but I did the best I could with my knowledge.
So, what am I to do? Archive my legacy images now in digital, so that they’ll be safe?
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