Yes, I kept certain keepsake type 35mm slide shots of family and such that I particularly like. But the majority were thrown out after making slide shows. I have kept all my medium formats. But thirty years ago I made 16x20 framed pictures of thirty of them, now only three left. If I decide to make any future prints then I rescan the one or two or send out for a pro scan.
Sometimes getting rid of the old lets you move on to the new. Otherwise you stay stuck in past performance rather than striking out to fresh discoveries.
Unless you’re a hoarder of useless stuff like old newspapers or nail clippings, that’s one of the greatest fallacies doing the rounds currently.
I don't know about "getting stuck in the past". As we age and see things in a new way, what opinion we had about an image years back can potentially change, quite often in a far more positive direction. This is not about memories being reevaluated, but a style of how an image was composed. At least I see that looking at quite old photographs and now with a lot more positive visual value, from composition to message etc. And unless one really doubles down on his digital storage, triple copied (with one buried under the house in a gamma ray proof box of course), there is no way to ensure such copies will hold their complete data indefinitely.
I agree. And we have to remember that with regards to scanned photos, not only electronic devices holding the scanned files will eventually break, but also that their cloud backup may not survive an operations disaster, business failure and file format may become obsolete.
You got me wrong. I am not saying that film only is the way to go, it is obvious that storing film for long term is not trivial.
When I was in business, I use to install and maintain fire alarm systems in NYC's high rise buildings. One of them was the American Bible Society on Broadway, a 12 story owner occupied building. On the second floor, they had a library of old and rare bibles and parts of the original Gutenberg printing press. The room had glass walls but was protected by about thirty large CO2 filled cylinders that would fill the room with gas if the alarm station was pulled in the room. You had about twenty seconds to get out of there before the gas would be released. After that you'd probably died from asphyxiation. But your body would be surrounded by the stored bibles that would be saved.
Now they use Halon that's supposedly safer or some other chemical gas that would let you live, maybe. @Alan Edward Klein thank you for sharing!
Thanks for the update. I was in business twenty plus years ago. So I'm not up to date with the recent suppression materials. At one time there was Halon II because of the problems with the original. Most places use water sprinkler systems. But you don't want to use those in electronic areas or if you have materials like old bibles you don't want ruined. The Carbon Dioxide system in the Bible Society was actually illegal at the time by NYC Building Codes. But it had been installed years earlier when it was legal So it was grandfathered and allowed to remain without updating it. I wonder what they're doing now?
I assume the idea of "superior" digital data security over physical negatives is one with cloud storage, not in the drawer that used to hold those negatives, which would have burned down irrespective of content.
Where do you have those files?
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