Will your family treasure passing the iPhone around or holding prints....

I don't think there's an either / or here; and I also think that us old farts are missing the point because we are trying to replace one technology with trying to shoehorn a new tech into that world.

It's stupid to pass round the iphone, it misses the point by a country mile.

My kids are young adults (not even that young now) and I have grandkids - lets compare them with my life at that age.

I was a keen photographer in my 20's as a young dad - I'd shoot a lot more photo's than my peers, and when friends and relatives came round I'd entertain them by passing round prints or showing slides. My siblings / friends would have very few photo's and their photo sharing experiences would be less regular and indeed include very old pics of relatives.

Fast forward to 2020, my daughter has a shared iphoto album for each of her kids and all the family and a few close friends are entertained almost daily with photos and video clips of the babies. If you visited her house, the walls have more prints than mine did when she was a kid*; mostly from photo shoots (done by me) but they also have a calendar every year with images of the wider family (in their birthday month).

So the reality is that even non photographers are getting more pleasure and sharing more than we photographers ever did when we simply handed round prints.

*I had very few family pics on the wall for years, but the Mrs has just gone through all the old photo albums and our digital files and we have an extensive gallery on the hall walls now.
 
I'm 48, and I find viewing pics on an iPad or similar, far better than having to flick through a bunch of tatty dog-eared paper prints.
 
I print now and again but not too often now.

When I eventually shuffle off I don't think anyone will care about my printed pictures. Maybe the family albums will be kept and put in a cupboard but I don't know if they'll be looked at. I don't know what will happen to all my camera gear, it'll probably be skipped in the house clearance. I can't see anyone caring about the thousands of flower and scene pictures I take. The historic prints going back through the years to WW1 times will just end up being lost to time I expect, no one will know who they are.

My little hobby is just for my own enjoyment and I realise that. It is sad that the old family pictures wont be preserved or treasured for long after I go but we don't have children and I don't suppose that my nieces and nephews children will be bothered. That's the hardware, prints and gear.

The one thing that will remain is the pictures we've shared electronically with family and friends but these too will be lost in time as the hardware they're on is replaced or they're lost in the constant stream of new pictures arriving on the social media pages.
 
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Phil V said:
I don't think there's an either / or here; and I also think that us old farts are missing the point because we are trying to replace one technology with trying to shoehorn a new tech into that world.

It's stupid to pass round the iphone, it misses the point by a country mile.

My kids are young adults (not even that young now) and I have grandkids - lets compare them with my life at that age.

I was a keen photographer in my 20's as a young dad - I'd shoot a lot more photo's than my peers, and when friends and relatives came round I'd entertain them by passing round prints or showing slides. My siblings / friends would have very few photo's and their photo sharing experiences would be less regular and indeed include very old pics of relatives.

Fast forward to 2020, my daughter has a shared iphoto album for each of her kids and all the family and a few close friends are entertained almost daily with photos and video clips of the babies. If you visited her house, the walls have more prints than mine did when she was a kid*; mostly from photo shoots (done by me) but they also have a calendar every year with images of the wider family (in their birthday month).

So the reality is that even non photographers are getting more pleasure and sharing more than we photographers ever did when we simply handed round prints.

*I had very few family pics on the wall for years, but the Mrs has just gone through all the old photo albums and our digital files and we have an extensive gallery on the hall walls now.
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Yes, both 'digital' viewing and physical prints have their place in many families futures.

But and it IMO is a big but........there are millions of picture takers whose only family pictures are or will be on their phones!

With instant(?) upload to the cloud, the surmise is that should the phone be lost, stolen or otherwise irreplaceably damaged....the pictures are safe.

However, what does safe mean in the scheme of family memories type pictures. Unless shared widely i.e. only one copy, what happens if it is not the phone that is lost but the owner/user of the phone.....how easy will it be for those family members to retrieve the pictures???

So, as you say Phil it is not an either or situation (I don't think Kevin Raber in his article said or implied it was?) but more a case of the printed picture still has a role and place in family memories legacy :)
 
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Will there be an electronic equivalent of the discovery of Vivian Maier's photographs?
 
I don't like looking at photos on a screen, I'd far rather see a few a4 or larger prints.
 
Phil V said:
A discovered external hard drive
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External hard drives left lying around might well be knackered, or unreadable in some other way. And unless labelled as containg photos are unlikely to be of any interest to anyone. But you never know I suppose. I've a couple of old drives with photos on them which I can't read any longer. Good job I made back ups on CD.

The strange thing with prints is that they are difficult to throw away even if you have no direct connection to them. They have a talismanic aspect to them. That's why people put them in frames and keep them in wallets and so forth.

People treasure objects more than zeroes and ones.
 
Ed Sutton said:
External hard drives left lying around might well be knackered, or unreadable in some other way. And unless labelled as containg photos are unlikely to be of any interest to anyone. But you never know I suppose. I've a couple of old drives with photos on them which I can't read any longer. Good job I made back ups on CD.

People treasure objects more than zeroes and ones.
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I have some CD that I could not read after 6 years, just as well I had copies on hard drives.

I have just scanned some very old family photos, there where others I had no idea who they where, Some I could guess as being great granddads.
 
I think you need some prints.
I want past and see prints of my family, at different events, in most rooms. Its nice to see my late parents smiling back at me daily. Just because they are displayed. Id never flick through them on a tablet.
My kids houses have no photo prints at all.
 
If I snuff it, my hard drive will likely go in the bin. I've done photobooks for both girls in the past, and there's quite a few on my bookshelves, and prints in boxes. The negs will probably also go in the bin, but I suspect family will sort through the physical stuff and keep/bin it as they see fit.

My photobooks are probably my legacy as it's obvious what they are and someone would need to make an active decision to bin them vs a hard drive.

Ed Sutton said:
Will there be an electronic equivalent of the discovery of Vivian Maier's photographs?
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The question for my family is what they will think of my Covid Mirror Selfie mini-book where I've been documenting the state of my hair every day for the last few months. I'm putting it next to Maier's Self Portraits book out of poetic license :) My last little joke for everyone...
 
Some years ago, I was given an old iMac by someone whose brother had died. I thought it only fair to copy all the (mostly graphic design stuff) files onto a DVD for the relative. But they weren't interested in any way. It seemed sad that a person's creativity could just then end up wiped from history. Erased, with no physical legacy whatsoever.

For some weird reason, I've kept that DVD. Dunno why. Just seemed wrong to simply bin it, somehow...
 
seaodyssey said:
I have just scanned some very old family photos, there where others I had no idea who they where, Some I could guess as being great granddads.
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That is a common thing with old photos. No info on who or what is in them.
 
Given that the majority of photographs these days are taken on mobile phones and the end point for them is likely to be social media*, it’s interesting that Facebook now have the facility to ‘memorialise’ your account when you die. I guess that this will allow your account to remain alive when you’re not and thus allow access to the photographs that are stored. As to how long it is kept for, I don’t know, but it does represent an interesting solution to this issue.

As to whether a) Facebook will be around in 20 years time, and b) how likely you are to go and visit your uncle Bob’s memorialised Facebook account in 20 years time is a moot point of course.

*I’m talking about society in general, not the tiny bubble that is camera and photography enthusiasts - I know that there are plenty of people on here who don’t use either, and I don’t wish to argue the toss over this thanks.
 
Something perhaps not considered until the time comes (prompted by the post above about FB) is how one might get access to all of the online accounts of a loved one when they pop off. Perhaps they have an iCloud Photostream, Google drive or a Flickr account full of photos that become incredibly difficult for people to access.

You probably think about arrangements for accessing bank accounts etc but the above should be considered ahead of time as well.

Speaking from experience.
 
bl0at3r said:
Something perhaps not considered until the time comes (prompted by the post above about FB) is how one might get access to all of the online accounts of a loved one when they pop off. Perhaps they have an iCloud Photostream, Google drive or a Flickr account full of photos that become incredibly difficult for people to access.

You probably think about arrangements for accessing bank accounts etc but the above should be considered ahead of time as well.

Speaking from experience.
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I agree, as mentioned in my post #5, it is not necessarily the physical loss of the phone but loss of family access to the person's digital 'life' that they had been sharing.
 
One of the things we have done during lockdown is go through my late parents photographs. Most have gone in the bin to be honest. Most relate to holidays etc my parents took together, whilst they may have had meaning to them, they meant nothing to us. I did spend some time with some of the photographs that showed my dads own journey in photography, but again they ended in the bin.
I am not a sentimental person and I have my memories of my parents (I still kept some of the photographs)

My daughter is more sentimental than me, so she will most likely keep most of my photographs on a hard drive(s)
 

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