Be It Resolved...

Normally I discuss photography here with a mind more towards the creative personal expression side of things. You know, art. Today however I'm going to put that all aside a bit and talk about the pictures that we all take, even if we never think of them as anything more than simple snapshots. In the end, arguably, they're the ones that end up being most important.

One of my favourite things to do when I visit my parents is go through the half dozen or so family photo albums that have built up over the years, and the best photos for me are always the oldest, the ones from the old house when I was just a little kid and the even older ones from before I was born, especially of my parents when they were kids. Who knows if any thought was given to how those photographs would be enjoyed forty years or more into the future back when they were taken, but I'm grateful every time that I see them that they're still around to enjoy. It's to my own shame then that I haven't always considered whether the family photographs I take now will still be there for my children and their children to come, knowing as I do how their existence across time is threatened in a way the old photos I enjoy now never were.

My daughter, now 13. This file from this scan will probably long
gone by the time she has children of her own I'll want to show
this to, but negative should still be around long after that.

Threatened you say? Well yes, let me be counted among those who are saying. Let my explanation begin with the suggestion that, unlike previous centuries, in the digital age if we don't stop to consider the photographs we take as something to be valued and cared for over the long term, next to no one out there is doing it for us. A shoe box was never the best way to store photographs, but it was reliable enough to keep them long enough to show to generations yet unborn. The same can't be said for today's equivalent, hard drives, flash memory or DVDs. Thing is so many of us, wowed by the versatility economy and convenience of modern electronic imaging, don't even pause to consider the ethereal nature of the electronic pulses or magnetic charges that constitute the data which the right software can interpret into something they recognize as a photograph until the day the photograph it was assumed would always be there is suddenly irretrievable. If the images our grandparents and great grandparents took are still around, and technology only improves with time, things like this shouldn't happen right? The truth is things like this are no freak occurrences, they were bound to happen sooner or later and without careful active management things like this will just happen more often as time goes on.

No image is completely safe. Catastrophes happen, Digital images can be lost when a hard drive has a melt down or a phone manages to find its way into the toilet bowl. Traditional photographs can suffer permanent damaged from mildew or a three-year-old with who knows what on their fingers. If we're smart we take precautions to either prevent these things from happening or give us a backup if they do.

But accidents, carelessness and even manufacturing defects don't play in to what I'm talking about here. Rather the kinds of loss I'm talking about are just what happens over the due course of time. Though you'll never know when, they're what you should expect. Here's what I mean - take a reasonably carefully processed traditional colour print and an enclosed hard drive containing images and put them into safe storage free of environmental problems like high humidity or temperatures. What you can expect to find after twenty years is a photographic print that might show a noticeable colour shift and an antique hard drive that you'll probably be unable to pull any usable images from without hiring an data recovery service (currently this will cost roughly the same as a mid-range DSLR kit), no guarantees even then.

It's been noted with some irony that while there are more images being made now than ever before there may be precious little visual record of our time left as more and more data devolves into little more than random bits. This is more than just an imaginary sci-fi scenario, efforts are on now to lessen the blow of what is being called "The Digital Dark Age". (Historians refer to the "dark ages" not because they were such miserable times in which to live but because, with Roman customs like accurate record keeping and making life-like busts of leaders falling by the wayside, so little is known about them.) No one has been more outspoken about the need for this than Google Vice President Vint Cerf. In addition to strategies like data redundancy and active migration over time he notes the need to ensure the data makes sense over time as standards change and old file formats are forgotten about. To address this Cerf proposes developing what he calls "Digital Vellum", in effect embedding image files with the information needed to interpret the data back into visual form. This would be a little like making VHS cassettes with a player built right in - no need to worry that hardly anyone has a VCR anymore.

What can the average person do now to ensure their photographs continue to exist in the future. Cerf has a direct answer for this too... "Print them out, literally."

Let me preface my next point by saying first that I applaud Mr Cerf both for calling attention to this issue and its importance to, let's say it, humanity, and for actively doing something about it. Second, I harbour no illusions that it's a good idea to avoid the digital dark age by abandoning digital technology. This blog may be about analog photography it comes to you in digital form and having a digital camera makes it a lot easier to enrich the content.

That said, imagine a scenario in which all of Mr Cerf's suggestions came together. We'd have a physical print of all of the images we took. We'd have an original raw image as well that wouldn't suddenly become unreadable if the information that constitutes it degrades beyond a certain point and is self contained so as not to rely on a changeable standard or protocol to be reconstituted as an image. Well done, but need I point out that we had all that in the 1840's? As testament to that fact those images are still with us. Up until about the 2000's it was pretty much all we had and still have it today.

So here, for whatever you think it's worth (which I freely acknowledge may be nothing), are my humble recommendations.

• If you have a digital camera and have a situation where you would really benefit from its immediacy, its capabilities, its economy or its speed, use it. I do. 
• If you don't own a film camera, get one. As long as it works and you can still get film for it, an old clunker you got for coffee money at a garage sale is fine. Ideal even.
• If you've never used a film camera, learn. Understanding the process on a closer to the bone level is good for the soul and certainly won't hurt your photography skills generally. 
• If you have film cameras for pictures of rocks and trees but pick up something digital for family things, give your head a shake. If your film camera is something like a Deardorff get something smaller and more practical as well.
• Now that we all have a film camera and know how to use it, keep it loaded with a spare roll around just in case.
• Develop the habit of taking a pause any time you find yourself reaching for a digital camera. Think about the pictures you're thinking of taking and ask yourself if they might be something you would care to have ten or more years from now, perhaps even be something someone who isn't even be born yet would be interested to see one day. If the answer is yes, or even maybe, step back and go get that film camera instead.

I'm a confirmed film photographer but even so it's often tempting just to grab some digi-cam if we're just heading out to a friends' house for a barbecue. It's easier now, no worries about having to deal with the film after, the photos can just be emailed or posted online right away. It's something I may regret ten or twenty years down the road though. I ought to know better.

Years ago I swore off New Years resolutions. For me there should be a better reason to make a resolution than it's a particular day on the calendar, and if there is a resolution to be made, no time like the present. And so be it resolved...

Be it resolved that the collection of film cameras on the shelf is for more than just pretty pictures.

Be it resolved that the proper value of the pictures I take of the people in my life will be recognized and respected, not just for what they seem worth today, but the much greater value they are likely to have as time goes on to both myself and others.

Be it resolved that if it's really important, it goes on film.

Be it resolved that the really important ones are sometimes the pictures that were taken for no reason at all.

Post Script

While the ideas for this week's episode were rolling around the noggin a notion appeared unbidden for a quick little presentation to make the characteristically long winded point you just read in a more direct way. Owing to my recent experiences re-acquainting myself with iMovie it was easy enough to whip together, and so for your edification and amusement I offer the following... the following... Okay, so a good euphemism for propaganda film escapes me at the moment, but anyway here it is.