Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for March 02, 2018

I’ll bet more digital pictures have been taken than all the pictures in the days of film!

Jimmy might have a point, but I still side with digital. Besides the ease, I think that they might last longer. Photographs on paper eventually fade.

“People take pictures of each other; Just to prove they really existed” – Ray Davies

A cogent observation. Nostalgia driven.

A cogent observation. Nostalgia driven.

My mother is 87 and a week or so ago she said one of these days people are going to be sorry they don’t have pictures (i.e. prints) of many things, just “computer pictures” as she calls them.

I like having photos in hand and on the computer. I’ll often take my favorite 100 snapshots & have them printed, then I can look at them or staple them to a wall and enjoy them as I walk by.

My wife and I have just finished decluttering our house. The final step was going thru the many boxes of old photos we had. We scanned and saved the ones that we wanted to keep and tossed the rest. It was not an easy thing to do, and part of me agrees with Arlo, “the world will be a sadder place.”

Kodak had a series of ads that said “Pictures are memories you can hold in your hand.” That may be a little hokey but it is true.

Black-and-White photographs and negatives will endure, but not as much color, Kodachrome slides being a notable exception to the rule.

I attended the opening of a 100 year old time capsule once. The contents included coins, letters, a newspaper, a dollar bill and various other papers. The coins of course were in perfect shape. The newspaper had crumbled to small pieces, but some of the letters were readable. And the dollar bill was nearly perfect.

Someone there was video-taping the event on a VHS camera. I asked him what he was going to do with the tape and he said it would be buried with the new time capsule. I guess he never thought about the likelihood of having a working VHS player in 100 years, or having the tape still readable.

i have a b/w picture taken at Knott’s Berry Farm in the 40’s of my grandma and Chief Thundercloud, the first on screen Tonto

Just because it’s an “old photograph” doesn’t mean it has to be on paper.

Baring nuclear war or a huge meteor, the internet is going to exist in some form for a very long time. Chances are pictures that have been uploaded will still be online (especially if it is that nude picture that your ex-boyfriend took and swore that no one else would ever see).

That said, as long as you have a properly stored negative, especially a b&w negative, you have an archive that will easily last a century.