Without any doubt, the advent of digital imaging has brought great advantages to consumers and pro’s alike. However with all the advantages comes a few disadvantages. To me one of the biggest is that we just don’t print anything anymore. When was the last time you actually got a print from Walgreens, Costco etc? How many pictures do you have on your PC, your phone or sitting on that memory card that you’ve been meaning to download for the last few weeks?
The thing is, photographs are not just your memories, in 100 years time your descendants will want to look at the pictures you take today. They will want to see pictures of “granny” when she was a baby and they will know that we have never, ever had more and better means to capture and save images. At the same time we have never thrown away so many memories.
I think there is a thought process which says that digital images are timeless. However it’s been proven time and time again that our digital storage mechanisms are fragile and can easily be damaged or destroyed. DVD and CD disks probably only last 10 or 20 years maximum. Hard disks can fail in as few as 3 years and will definitely have failed in 5-8 years. Rarely do they last longer than that. Phones can be stolen or lost, then what do you do?
Efforts by Apple and Google to mirror your images to the “Cloud” help and various backup and disk mirroring processes also help but it’s a fight to keep a digital archive up to date and secure…
We should print more! I say this not because I have a vested interest (I guess I do) but because I love to look at old pictures and I am afraid that in the coming decades there will be fewer and fewer pictures to see.
muse & creator 