I want
you to take a moment and think; when was the last time you bought film for a
camera? How long has it been since you
owned a camera that required film? You do realize, you can still get film
processed, very inexpensively. You can take your exposed film to an outlet
center, they will send the film to a processing plant, who will develop the
film and send your images back on a DVD. In most cases, you will not receive
your negatives, they shred them. Why would you need your negatives; you have
your images on a DVD. For the majority of people, digital photography is the
way they capture and keep their images. It’s easy, cheap and you can share your
images instantly for the world to see, right now, on Facebook, Twitter and
snapchat. It’s there in an instant, possibly shared by some of your followers
and then forgotten. I recently had a conversation with Brian, at Harmon Photo,
here in Gainesville, we share the same concern; where is our family’s history
going to be in twenty years? He reminded me of our shared concern, which is
crossing the photo industry; keeping our history alive with photographs, is a
dying tradition.
Many of you
will be able to relate a memory from a time when you were a child and
anticipated a large family get together, with cousins, aunts and uncles and
grandparents. The excitement builds, as the time draws closer, your imagination
grows of what the event was going to be like; playing in the water, games, spitting
watermelon seeds on your cousins, laying in the grass, looking up and trying to
explain what kind of animal the clouds shaped into. You arrive late and when
you woke up in the morning, it was raining and the entire brood was sitting
around grandma’s house bored and fussing with each other. Grandma goes into her
bedroom, brings out some boxes and very soon, the adults are sitting around the
dining room table, looking at photographs, passing them along and commenting; what would
that car be worth now or, you really wore that? Soon the children would gather
with the adults, where they would point out family members from the past, on
yellowed gray, black and white photographs. Pictures were being taken out of
the box and handed around and someone would ask grandma; who is this? She would
take the photo and stare at it for a moment; that was… The picture of the naked
girl running in the yard, only to find out, it was your mom. Everyone is now
laughing and pointing at your embarrassed mother, but it’s not what you think, it is a picture was of a three year old girl. You find another picture of your mom, when
she was in elementary school. You pick up a photo of your school picture and
hold it alongside and stare at the features, how you resemble her. You dig down
into the old photos and find an aged, black and white photograph of a teenage
couple, standing in front of an old car; who is this grandma? She takes the
photo and brings her hand to her mouth as her eyes begin to tear, from a wound which
has not yet healed. That is your grandpa and me, going to a church social. She
brings the photo back in front of her and touches the image of the young man.
There are photos of soldiers and sailors, proms, weddings, family gatherings
and funerals, all part of your history, laid out before you. Where do you keep
your images?
Fifteen
years ago, we kept our images on three inch floppy disks; how many of you have
a computer that will read a floppy disc or where could you send the disk off to
recover your images? Would it be too expensive, that’s okay, it was just some
old pictures. Maybe you’ll store all your new images on a DVD or memory card;
are you aware they have 64 gig memory card, that will hold up to seven thousand
images? With technology increasing and in order to have the latest and greatest
mega pixel gadget and the best and greatest new place to store all your images,
in the cloud; what could possibly go wrong? What is going to happen to your
family history?
When you’re
gone… as they are cleaning out your desk drawers, cabinets and they find old
technology on floppy disk, DVD’s or memory cards… it will go into a bag, your
history is gone. There will be no sitting around the table laughing and
pointing and remembering your history. There will be no touching your history
because it will be in the trash heap of forgotten memories. How will they remember your history? Where
are your images?
Here are links to assist you of how to preserve your history;
Here are links to assist you of how to preserve your history;
Thank You, Louise Kehoe, of Kodak, for the information.
