Wartime wedding photo

The digital age doesn’t help the problem of lost photos….it makes it worse.
One man’s ‘improve’ is another man’s Fake. Unless you live in a matchbox the space your average families photos take up is not an issue.
I say again. No one is ever going to find your old photos in a box when you’ve gone. They are on that broken hard drive, or discarded computer that won’t boot, or on that remote hosting website that nobody knows about, or has your password for, if they did.

Not at all,unless you just deliberately discard the hard drives etc without backing things up incase they go wrong.If you spend alot of time and effort transferring stuff then i would guess you do multiple copies and label them as best as is possible.You can buy 32 gb memory card for a few pounds so no excuses really.Regarding fakes– the majority of people do NOT fake photos taken from the family albums.Keeping old photos may not be of interest to you or a few others of this present generation but just look at the interest that occurred when you had the WW1 100 years ,the BoB 75 years ,people were tracing their family trees and service records.This is for future generations as well,not just ours.

I say again. No one is ever going to find your old photos in a box when you’ve gone. They are on that broken hard drive, or discarded computer that won’t boot, or on that remote hosting website that nobody knows about, or has your password for, if they did.

In many cases, this will be true, but certainly every family has a different idea of legacy. Not enough think far enough ahead, and even if they do, the chain can be broken by the next-in-line who doesn’t do the same.

The loss of unique history (like knowing who is in the photo that started this thread) can be minimized if the person with the photos sees the wisdom in “sharing the wealth” with other family members, other researchers, and even with archives like the Imperial War Museum. And it’s much easier in the digital age to at least share digital files, even if the original papers/prints are lost.

But the lack of a caption, or a file name which defines the image, can be a killer.

The loss of history can also be minimized by mentioning in a will that photos, etc., should be given to X, Y, and Z. At least it’s in a will.

In terms of digital archiving, a will can specify that files on a functioning computer hard drive, or remote hard drive, or in remote storage, should be duplicated and sent to X, Y, and Z. I’ve done that in my will, for example, with directions. It doesn’t mean it will be done, but it at least increases the odds that the history will live on a little longer. Or maybe I’ll be organized and sane enough to duplicate files to send on while I’m able to do so.

At times I have sent people CDs containing all of my files on a specific missing Liberator investigation involving their loved ones. Have sent it to several within the same family, so that they each have it, for future family references, independent of one another. Again, at least it increases the odds that future generations will still have access to the mass of scanned memorabilia, including photos.

In another case, I compiled a digital record of all the photos and memorabilia of a Liberator wireless operator who was dying. I annotated everything and put it all into logical folders on CDs and sent it to the man’s son. He then delivered it to the Imperial War Museum, along with original items like wartime diaries (including a secret one the airman kept during his final days as a POW in Rangoon Jail. His file has some historical value to the IWM. At the same time, I made sure that the son in the UK, and his sister in Australia, had their own personal copies of the CDs.

By and large, though, most people won’t think of the value of their photos, etc, or even writing captions which would add something to the photo that might have meaning to someone one day. Thankfully, in my family, my father in retirement painstakingly organized all of his memorabilia, and us five kids have it all. The problem, though, is that we are scattered far and wide, so no one of us has it all! And there are a few photos that have no captions, or Dad’s captions were in error! I’ve scanned some of my cache of family goodies, but my siblings haven’t. So there’s potential for loss still!

It’s a battle to think outside of the box…the box containing the photos, etc., but maybe in the digital age there is a greater chance that a digital record can be passed on. At best, it will likely not be complete, though.

Cheers,

Matt

The digital age doesn’t help the problem of lost photos….it makes it worse.
One man’s ‘improve’ is another man’s Fake. Unless you live in a matchbox the space your average families photos take up is not an issue.
I say again. No one is ever going to find your old photos in a box when you’ve gone. They are on that broken hard drive, or discarded computer that won’t boot, or on that remote hosting website that nobody knows about, or has your password for, if they did.

The digital age doesn’t help the problem of lost photos….it makes it worse.
.

The digital age ,helps a great deal,you can improve photos/ video and store in a much smaller space area.I have just seen this morning via F/B some family photos that i didn’t know existed .Within seconds someone across the world can see them.

Photos are actually for the owners to do with what they wish, without obligation. Notwithstanding that, if the photos are anonymous there is little to see or to learn.

The digital age doesn’t help the problem of lost photos….it makes it worse.
No one is ever going to find your old photos in a box when you’ve gone. They are on that broken hard drive, or discarded computer that won’t boot, or on that remote hosting website that nobody knows about, or has your password for, if they did.

These matters are always very subjective. When my mother asked my brother and I to help her sort through and clear out her old photos there were dozens of photos of other people in her and my father’s lives, most of whom she had little or no recollection of 70 odd years on. So they were disposed of. The people in the photos would have been known to others, no doubt, but who? What would have been the point of keeping them, where storage was at a premium, anyway?

Photos are not always for the people in the past but for the generations in the future who may like the opportunity to see and learn.Disposing of stuff takes away that chance.

Some 10-15 years before my mother passed away she took the photographs of her side of the family and wrote details in pencil on the reverse and grouped them in to year envelopes. It didn’t mean much to me at the time but boy am I pleased she did now, as I follow suit.

I inherited a goodly bunch of large family and associate photos from my father going back to the turn of 19th century. Fascinating but who the hell were they.

I was never going to throw them away but an Australian genealogist, passionate about our common surname, contacted me and asked if he could call by on his latest research trip to the UK.

His eyes lit up when I showed him my fathers photographs. That’s the so and so twins of your dad’s cousin, this is the branch of the family that went to US/Canada, this lady went to Argentina and made a fortune etc etc. Face recognition software soon picked out half a dozen or more images of a grand-father I never knew, from a young man through to a quite old gentleman.

The moral is, if you have the space, save them or digitalise them.

Shuffling my fathers postcard album, the email of its day, starting 1905, on to a spread sheet with address, date, who wrote it and to whom, gave me and the researcher a picture of family life I never could have imaged when it was interrogated.

Mark

These matters are always very subjective. When my mother asked my brother and I to help her sort through and clear out her old photos there were dozens of photos of other people in her and my father’s lives, most of whom she had little or no recollection of 70 odd years on. So they were disposed of. The people in the photos would have been known to others, no doubt, but who? What would have been the point of keeping them, where storage was at a premium, anyway?

Shared on f/b

Yes, it’s very sad when photos like these are just thrown away. Often the case when an elderly lady or gent dies and their houses have to be cleared 🙁
Here’s a link to the Facebook appeal –

https://www.facebook.com/bomb.boogie.3/posts/1249997755027465?pnref=story

Have you tried getting this shown on the local TV station(s) – just the sort of human interest story they like. Somebody just might have a clue.

The problem is when the last person who knows the subjects in the photos has gone,those in the photos become strangers.In this day and age with the ability to digitise photos it does seem a shame that photos are just disposed of.
We have now reached the stage where modern generations are about the first to have their whole lives recorded in photos and video,,photos were a rare luxury and probably more cherished in the past.
It would be nice to find the history of the photos dumped.

What is the facebook page maybe some of us on there can share the photo?

For the last few years since digital camera’s have been with us, I’ve wished I’d had one and wondered at what I could have now had stored, but I must agree that old photo’s hold a magical quality. When my mother passed away I found 2 old biscuit tins full of them, I recognised 5% the others are lost in time( not a/c related), but how I wished I’d asked her about them…

regards,
jack…

The problem is when the last person who knows the subjects in the photos has gone,those in the photos become strangers.In this day and age with the ability to digitise photos it does seem a shame that photos are just disposed of.
We have now reached the stage where modern generations are about the first to have their whole lives recorded in photos and video,,photos were a rare luxury and probably more cherished in the past.
It would be nice to find the history of the photos dumped.

What is the facebook page maybe some of us on there can share the photo?

JimC and I have a mutual friend who runs a skip company, the photograph albums and wartime items he finds is saddening. Some people have no concept of the history when they throw away items from their own familys past.

Such a shame when photos such as this are discarded.

Sorry, I can be of no use and it looks to be a uphill task, but I do hope they had a good and long marriage…

regards,
jack…