I came across this article/post with the above title recently, and it dawn upon me about what the author wrote. The article was written by Mike Yost of Mike Yost Photography. Here is the link to the post here. I do agree with him and what this generation will face 10 years from now.
With the digital age, cameras are everywhere. They are on your smartphones, tablets and also DSLRs. The camera is always by our side. We just take it out of our pockets or bags; point, shoot and upload it immediately to social media. However, these images are hardly even printed. They are just uploaded today and forgotten tomorrow. 99% of the images are not important enough to be printed. These images end up in loads of hard disks, smartphone memory, USB drives, Facebook or Instagram. Technology is ever-changing and it is changing very fast. Most people upgrade to a new smartphone yearly. We used to have floppy disks, CDs and DVDs to store our data, however, we find that these media are not supported in 5 years or less. They become obsolete and file types are going to change too. The technology of tomorrow may not support these “older” file types.
There will come a day when you would like to recall a memory that is vaguely in your mind, and you’ll realise that you cannot find the images because you had so many photos and your cannot recall where it is stored. Worst case scenario, the USB drive or hard disk that you stored the image in, is no longer supported by current technology! These are slices of our lives, whether they are printed and mounted on self-adhesive albums, loose 4R photos in a box or a simple photobook. When we open and view these photos, memories flashes right before our eyes. We laugh, cry and tease each other. Our life is right there in the prints! We do not have to wonder if the file type is still supported or if the hard disk is still working. None of these matters as we have the images right before our eyes. These are the things that matter most when a disaster strikes. All of a sudden that expensive surround sound speakers are not important anymore, nor that huge TV with superb colour and sharpness. It is always the memories of our lives that we search first.
If you are part of this “digital revolution”, would you want to regret one day and blame yourself for not paying for that RM500.00 canvas of your photo taken by a professional photographer that is an important slice of your life to be shown to your next generation?
2028…your great-granddaughter asked to view images of her mother when she was her age. You start to look for the images in your DVD and then realised that there is no technology that supports this media. To make things worst, Instagram and Facebook have been sold to another company and they have decided to charge for online storage, which you did not sign up for, 5 years ago.
Think about it now. It may not be important to you now but the above scenario may just be you in 10 years time. Would you like to be in this situation? Would you want to be one of the “most photographed generation that doesn’t have a photograph in 10 years”?
Memories are priceless.
