My dad went into a nursing-care home recently, and last week we were going
through some of his things in his house. Among them were 3 wooden
shoebox-sized boxes of B&W prints, some dating back to ones my grandparents
shot with a Brownie No.2 and Brownie Hawkeye Flash and a Warwick box camera.
So some of the shots were from 6x9, some from 6x6 120 and 620 film. Almost
all of the prints were very well preserved, essentially the same as the day
they were printed. Also were Kodachrome 25 and 64 pics shot with dad's
Voigtlander, again the picture quality is essentially as new. (I inherited
the Voigtlander, Brownie No 2, and Hawkeye Flash cameras; I just wanted them
for keepsakes.)
At one time my grandmother was into photography, and made some tin-type
pictures. Very interesting pics, and still quite good.
The big difference from today though, is that they shot relatively few
pictures. A shoe-box sized box could hold years worth of pictures, as they
mostly shot only family, vacations, special occasions, etc. There were
almost no pictures without people included. In contrast, a large part of my
pictures are scenery, flowers, and other feeble attempts at art. As to our
family photos, I agree, future generations will hopefully find them
interesting. Family photos are the sort of thing I deliberately record with
Kodachrome, E6, or B&W. Much of the other stuff is expendable, for which
digital is fine. Not likely any of my family is going to care about my
flower shots in 100 years. Truth is, they don't even care now :-)
Wayne
----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew Fildes" <afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <olympus@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, February 03, 2006 3:55 PM
Subject: [OM] Re: Long term survival of prints
>
> You'd be surprised. When my father-in-law died we inherited a photo-
> album going back over 150 years, to family in Hawick, Scotland,
> before they emigrated to Oz. Nice cabinet portraits in fine
> condition, for the most part. And not one of them identified. We know
> who the photographers were and where they were and 'Oh look, he's the
> spitting image of your half-brother Ted' but who the hell are they?
> We'll never know.
> Take a soft pencil and write some legends on the back of your family
> photos, now. Just in case.
> AndrewF
>
>
> On 04/02/2006, at 4:05 AM, Wayne Culberson wrote:
>
> > My guess is though, the next generations will be glad most of my
> > photography
> > didn't survive :-)
>
>
>
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