Where Have All the Pictures Gone?

During the pandemic, I decided to rummage through my basement and, like so many other people, undertook the purging process. I came across a dozen or so photo albums from many years ago, and started to browse the pages. The memories began to flow as I flipped page after page. I suddenly realized all my photographs from the last 25 years are digital, and have never made it into albums.

As convenient as computers, phones and tablets are, if they fail, everything on them fails as well. I could conceivably no longer have the history of my life, to pass on to other generations.

Keeping pictures on the Cloud is great, but if your password is lost or you do not renew your subscription, all that info will disappear. I recently heard of a virtual storage company shutting down, and gave all its customers 24 hours to download their files.

As a photographer, this is concerning, as I have about 500 photographs which I consider to be my best of the best. Sure I print them and sell them, but as far as legacy goes, they will probably disappear when I do, unless my survivors are able to download them from my computer.

I have taken well over 250,000 photographs in my life, and have always had a top 500 group. I consider these my best, and if I want to add one to the group, I force myself to delete one, in its place.

Losing those files would be devastating, so I decided to undertake a project to ensure these photos stay around longer than I will.

I wanted to create a catalogue, which at first seemed a simple task. Not the case. Yes, I have all the files