Images corrupt and apps are unreliable. Your backups may not be backing up what you thought. Websites suffer neglect.
A few years after you die, your files may not even be readable, if someone even cares to look after them.
The truth is, there’s no such thing as an archival digital format. There’s nothing wrong with that necessarily for the photographer. The photographer’s enjoyment is in the moment.
Once a year, put your best images (stories) in a book. It’s not for you. It’s for anyone who enjoys a good story, even long after you’re gone.
My best friend, Tom, had a house fire in the 90s that destroyed all of his photos and negatives (during his most prolific period as an enthusiastic young hobbyist). As a result, he developed an entirely different way of approaching archivism and we all could learn something from it.
Recently, I was talking about my own archives from that same period and how I was going to deal with scanning the thousands of negatives I had amassed. I wanted to create a digital archive I could easily back up to avoid the same destruction Tom faced.
Tom advised me to revisit the places in those negatives and produce something better than I had produced back then. Then, throw away the old negatives. He gave me a few hundred new projects in under 5 seconds and I couldn’t wait to get started.
Life is fleeting and you can’t take your archives with you. Chances are, no one will tend to them even a few years after you’re gone. The real value in photography is an appreciation of the present.
