are black and white photographers vain, all this talk about archival image making

[Sirius Glass]

Why this talk of the archival qualities of properly fixed and toned black and white photographs? Because photographers who use film and print in the darkroom are still digging for something to distinguish their preferred process from digital imaging and printing. That's all. They don't spend much time talking up the archival qualities of color prints for instance.

An image stored digitally can be reprinted at any point in the future. Prints made in the future might even look better than those made today due to advances in printing technology. Since this is information being stored instead of an artifact, it's conceivable, but unlikely, that a digital image could last until the heat death of the universe.

That is a fabrication of the digital world. I am concerned about archival properties because I want my work to be done properly and last a long time in frames or photographic albums. Please do not inflict your insecurities on me!

 

[Theo Sulphate]

... Also look at the loss of the Moon Surveyor Photographs taken before the first Lunar landing due to lose of computer tape players and the types of computers that could run the software. ...

Do you know if the majority of photos were printed? As a little kid I was fascinated by the images from the Ranger and later the Surveyor spacecraft. I thought that as soon as the image was received it was scanned onto photographic film; I didn't realize they also saved an electronic copy.

...
yeah, that is why i should ditch all those test prints and strips if i haven't already ...

Find them and make a collage. Seriously.

...
An image stored digitally can be reprinted at any point in the future. ...

That's true only if all these are true:

* The bits are being refreshed on a timely basis to prevent bit rot (storage on a single USB stick probably won't last 10 years; a DVD maybe 20).

* The image is regularly copied to new media.

* Someone or some entity (e.g. cloud storage provider) continues to ensure the images exist on the servers, media, whatever.

* Someone sees value in preserving the media on which the images reside and pays to keep it there or copy it to new media. A print in a shoebox is immediately viewable and can be kept or tossed. A USB stick or DVD in a drawer cannot be viewed unless someone in the future has the interest and means to view it.

* The format that the image is in has to be readable in the future by some program. Will .NEF, .PEF, or .RAF files be viewable 100 years from now?

 

[Sirius Glass]

... Also look at the loss of the Moon Surveyor Photographs taken before the first Lunar landing due to lose of computer tape players and the types of computers that could run the software. Yes we all know that Micro$oft never changes any formats.

Do you know if the majority of photos were printed?

A few years back there was a massive project taken to find the last few computers and tape drives so that the tapes could be read and saved. You only saw the photographs recently because of that heroic effort. The point is without such efforts the photographs would have been lost. So much for those who think digital photographs last forever.

 

[faberryman]

Someone sees value in preserving the media on which the images reside and pays to keep it there or copy it to new media. A print in a shoebox is immediately viewable and can be kept or tossed. A USB stick or DVD in a drawer cannot be viewed unless someone in the future has the interest and means to view it.

This is critical, applies to both film and digital, and is the reason most photographers should not be worried. Look at your images as ask the question who besides you cares whether it exists or not.

It is perhaps too much of a generalization to say that those most vocal about archivability have the least interesting images, but it is something to consider.

 

[jtk]

A few years back there was a massive project taken to find the last few computers and tape drives so that the tapes could be read and saved. You only saw the photographs recently because of that heroic effort. The point is without such efforts the photographs would have been lost. So much for those who think digital photographs last forever.

What you think you almost remember was technically resolved successfully decades ago, not "a few years back". What you're inadvertently demonstrating proves the opposite of what you imagine.

As for "heroic measures", that's precisely what we what we get every day from our technology. It's getting smarter and more capable on a continual basis.

 

[jtk]

This is critical, and applies to both film and digital, and is the reason most photographers should not be worried. Look at your images as ask the question who besides you cares whether it exists or not.

If one wants her/his digital images stored in a shoe box that's easily done with inkjet prints.

The way one's shoe box of snaps or one's digital files will be found in the future has mostly to do with digital records...e.g. Microsoft, Google et all..who are continuously quietly updating. Nonetheless, the little old folks who keep dozens of cats, living and dead, and save piles of newspapers can continue to root around in the basements of dead ancestors....just as they do today.

 

[Kino]

The same arbitrary hand that decays and destroys analog media will continue with digital as well.

The Library of Alexandria was, no doubt, funded equally well as any modern corporate archive.

Fate is fickle and unpredictable...

 

[faberryman]

The way one's shoe box of snaps or one's digital files will be found in the future has mostly to do with digital records...e.g. Microsoft, Google et all..who are continuously quietly updating..

Only if you post your shoebox of images on the web.

 

[Sirius Glass]

What you think you almost remember was technically resolved successfully decades ago, not "a few years back". What you're inadvertently demonstrating proves the opposite of what you imagine.

As for "heroic measures", that's precisely what we what we get every day from our technology. It's getting smarter and more capable on a continual basis.

A few years back covers decades in the scheme of time. You are spending all the time splitting hairs and going out of the way to understand points made by others and myself. Are naturally obtuse or do you work at it?

 

[Theo Sulphate]

... one's digital files will be found in the future has mostly to do with digital records...e.g. Microsoft, Google et all..who are continuously quietly updating. ...

Google, Microsoft, et al. are not my friends. I don't want to rely on them for long term storage of my images nor entrust them with my data. If others choose to do so, that is fine.

 

[removed account4]

This is critical, applies to both film and digital,

look at what happened to atget ?!
the folklore i heard IDK 30 years ago was that
bernice abbott saved all of atget's work from the trash ...
and john garo ( karsh's teacher ) has very few if any surviving negatives
and he was the karsh of his day ...

Fate is fickle and unpredictable

you can say that again !
artifacts in museums and churches
thousands of years old ( mesopotamian, assyrian sumerian and babylonian )
destroyed in the last 10 years ...

pretty soon johnny dep will become the internet, it has been foretold ..

 

[jtk]

A few years back covers decades in the scheme of time. You are spending all the time splitting hairs and going out of the way to understand points made by others and myself. Are naturally obtuse or do you work at it?[/QUOTE

"scheme of time" .. wow! maximum meaningless.

You are not making "points," you are repeatedly shooting yourself in the foot.

Have you seen Sony's digital theatrical release of "Lawrence of Arabia" ? If not you are out of your depth, blythely unaware of digital scans of material vastly larger than 8X10. All of your thinking is outdated. Better you should shoot film and be happy.

 

[jtk]

Google, Microsoft, et al. are not my friends. I don't want to rely on them for long term storage of my images nor entrust them with my data. If others choose to do so, that is fine.

You need not rely on Google. If you're posting your images anywhere online they're already on the road to eternal.

 

[removed account4]

Only if you post your shoebox of images on the web.

and if the shoe box didn't get wet and the ink run, or the ink wasn't from inkkdadddy and it was aftermarket and not good quality or ...
personally i don't want to leave my personal archive of images in the hands of some company that will end up charging me money to view
my images seeing possession is 9/10 of the law .. at least if my goldfish holds my prints hostage i can print another without issue

 

[Theo Sulphate]

You need not rely on Google. If you're posting your images anywhere online they're already on the road to eternal.

That's fine. About 10 years ago I had a lot of photos up on a sharing site that suddenly shut down and no one could access their photos from there any longer. Of course, I still had the original images. I suppose I could upload to instagram, but 98% of what I do is of no value to anyone. The 2% that may be of interest far in the future are my historian/archivist photos I make of small towns, rural settings, and landscapes that are certain to change drastically within 20 years.

 

[Sirius Glass]

and if the shoe box didn't get wet and the ink run, or the ink wasn't from inkkdadddy and it was aftermarket and not good quality or ...
personally i don't want to leave my personal archive of images in the hands of some company that will end up charging me money to view
my images seeing possession is 9/10 of the law .. at least if my goldfish holds my prints hostage i can print another without issue

+1

 

[NedL]

You need not rely on Google. If you're posting your images anywhere online they're already on the road to eternal.

They will become a needle in an eternal haystack! I think I remember reading that people are now taking more than 1 trillion ( with a "t" ) photographs per year. Mostly with their "smart" phones. So, let's say we start looking at them... maybe we can glance at 1 photo per second. After over 300,000 years we'll have seen the first year's worth of photos....

Someone here once said they liked making prints, the "more ephemeral the better" I make a few like that myself.

Actually... there was a thread here once about a student who took photos ( I think they were digital, but not sure ) and wouldn't let her teacher see them because that would ruin them ( they are in the camera... and that was the point, they were not meant to be seen! ) I wish I could find that thread again, it was pretty funny.

 

[cowanw]

Nothing says loving like a online file or a giglee print or screen view of a daguerreotype. Can be reproduced forever, without the pesky bulk.

 

[Theo Sulphate]

Yeah...I'm looking at the Mona Lisa painting ny DaVinci right now. Don't see what all the fuss is about.

 

[NB23]

Both teams stink in my opinion... now lets go leafs.

Let’s Go! Win the cup!

 

[removed account4]

Someone here once said they liked making prints, the "more ephemeral the better" I make a few like that myself.

whoever that was was brilliant !
its all ephemera anyways, all of it .. and none of it is real.

Actually... there was a thread here once about a student who took photos ( I think they were digital, but not sure ) and wouldn't let her teacher see them because that would ruin them ( they are in the camera... and that was the point, they were not meant to be seen! ) I wish I could find that thread again, it was pretty funny.

hey nedL
almost a year ago i went to this small island near where i live and was overwhelmed by the spirituality of the place. i wandered and sat and listened and was drawn to
the interior of the spit of land where the cacophony of birds boats people wind water faded away
and i was in silence.
i saw trees rustling in the wind ( there was no wind ) i heard the tall eel and sea grass saying SHHHHH! in the windless day too.
i exposed a few glass plates i coated the day before and never processed or looked at them. ( still, 355 days later ).
i can see why the student didn't want her teacher to look at her images, a perfect performance, perfect memories.

at present i have about 30 rolls of memories and i have been debating whether or not to turn them into disappointments.

i almost wish they were all taken on pan F ( the film with ephemeral latent images )...
so i wouldn't need to develop them at all seeing soon after they were exposed they'd all be blank..

 

[slackercrurster]

OP, not just BW wet prints. I think most photogs want their work to last.

Why bother to freeze time if it will fade away? Your choice. Maybe you only need a photo for a month or two. If you like you work to disappear I recommend dye based inkjet prints and expose to light.

 

[JBrunner]

For me if it lasts or not isn’t the point, although I’d like it to last a long time...

I have prints because I view a B&W darkroom
print as a physical artifact of a certain craft and art, a tactile piece of artwork that occupies physical space and has physical properties. The image and the print are not the same thing to me.

I can appreciate the image for the image, but I appreciate a print for the image and the artifact and the maker of the artifact like any other piece of art. Through-out my B&W career, I never really have embraced my title of photographer, I have always considered myself a printer. Exposing an image is the barest beginning of a print in my world.

What happens to my clouded snappies in the future? Who cares? Archeologists studying the fragments of this epoch will conclude we were a society that worshiped kittens, sunsets, and ourselves. Claims beyond that are simple pretentiousness.

Not everybody has to share this opinion, it’s just how I feel.

 

[NedL]

i can see why the student didn't want her teacher to look at her images, a perfect performance, perfect memories.

In one of his blogs, Joe VC made a kind of mental camera: a block of wood vaguely shaped like a camera which "clicks" when you press the "shutter". A device to click moments into memory. Isn't it amazing how we can remember the moments we took a picture... more than what the scene looked like but how it made us feel, impressions that go beyond anything words can describe. I was being a little silly mentioning those things, but there really is something to them: something being both beautiful and ephemeral like a sand painting, and what the act of making a photograph does to the photographer....

If you like you work to disappear I recommend dye based inkjet prints and expose to light.

No kidding. The professional photographer with the flashy brochure we hired at the hospital on the day my daughter was born gave us a "print". It has slowly faded in it's frame until now it almost can't be seen. I don't have a negative or a file or anything else to replace it... sometimes we want at least some permanence.. that leaves me feeling like we were cheated in a bad way ( duped into thinking the photo would last, or that we didn't need a real photograph! )

 

[michr]

That's true only if all these are true:

* The bits are being refreshed on a timely basis to prevent bit rot (storage on a single USB stick probably won't last 10 years; a DVD maybe 20).

* The image is regularly copied to new media.

* Someone or some entity (e.g. cloud storage provider) continues to ensure the images exist on the servers, media, whatever.

* Someone sees value in preserving the media on which the images reside and pays to keep it there or copy it to new media. A print in a shoebox is immediately viewable and can be kept or tossed. A USB stick or DVD in a drawer cannot be viewed unless someone in the future has the interest and means to view it.

* The format that the image is in has to be readable in the future by some program. Will .NEF, .PEF, or .RAF files be viewable 100 years from now?

All of those things are a concern. But, digital archaeology will exist. Technology will exist to extract information off those devices. But in the short term, our digital photos are only viable as long as they are kept moving. So as long as we're alive, we have the job of making sure this information is copied into a succession of media. But after that, it's in someone else's hands. Just like whatever shoebox you'd throw some prints into. The sad fact is, the majority of photos will either go into a landfill or evaporate slowly from digital media. The much touted 500 years for paper is under ideal conditions. Someone has to care to retain those documents, they have to be worth something. It's the same with digital images.

Since we're talking about the very long term, there's no way of knowing what might be buried for a time then resurrected. Twenty-year-old media might be very hard to recover, and 500-year-old media, trivial. Most likely, no one's going to bother unless there's the perception that the information has some value. I bought a small box full of photos, 3x5s mostly, at an estate sale awhile back. I had the thought of scanning them in and sharing them online. I haven't quite gotten around to that. The chain of custody that made those images meaningful has been lost. I don't recognize any faces. Very little is labeled, or with scant text, first names, years. These photos are worthless without context. What difference does it make if I pitch them in the trash or the paper lasts 500 years. It doesn't matter either way. If the family who had these were willing to sell for $5, how much are they worth when I'm gone?

Bitrot is becoming a more recognized problem in the last few years. Of the image formats you mention, I know most NEF types are supported in Open Source software, so that is at least documented. Likely, those formats are documented elsewhere. Taking the very long view, these are encrypted files. Even a completely opaque format could be reverse-engineered today or in the future.