Foreign Perspectives

I’m sure that many of you have photos just like this one. It was taken in 1909 and shows my great grandparents and their whole family at that time.

You won’t have terribly many photos like that because at that time having your photograph taken was a grand event and, as you can see, everyone dressed up for the occasion. In fact, that remained the case for quite some time afterwards and it was really only as we edged into the 1950s that the number of photographs taken went up with cameras getting into the hands of amateurs in large numbers.

So, chances are, that you have quite a lot of photos from the 1950s and in increasing numbers through to the 1990s.

And then we all began to go digital and took even more photos than we ever did before.

Yet, how many of those digital photos will be printed? Don’t forget that it’s almost certainly only going to be those that are printed that will be available to future generations. Your grandchildren certainly won’t have anything capable of reading that SD card with your wedding photos on it for sure. Ah, but you wiped it when you copied the photos onto the computer, didn’t you?

But what about those photos on the computer? Have you taken a backup copy of them? You certainly can’t depend on the hard disc lasting forever so if you haven’t a second copy of them, chances are that you’ll lose them sooner or later. Even if you do make backup copies, how good are you at maintaining them? After all, backup discs wear out too. And, of course, there’s the issue that your grandchildren probably won’t be able to read that backup disc anyway, unless you’ve made a point of copying it onto the latest type every 3 to 5 years (don’t forget that USB drives have only been available for around 5 years and probably won’t be around for another 5).

So, despite us taking lots more photos, I suspect that our grandchildren will only have a very small selection of them to look at ie those that we’re printed out over the years.

As for video? No chance. Right through the 1980s you probably recorded your video on VHS but now that those players are starting to be phased out, have you bothered to copy those tapes onto your computer or onto DVDs? If you don’t do it within the next five years or so, you could find that you no longer have something capable of playing the tapes.