Preparing to meet one's maker...

[camner]

Lightroom Version Number

11.5

Operating System

1. macOS 12 Monterey

My photo collection is getting close to 20,000 edited and published photos, of which probably about 75% are family photos dating back to 1975 (pre-2003 photos are all scans).

Being just shy of my 70th birthday, I figure that I have most likely someplace between 10 and a maximum of 20 years to get my photographic affairs in order.

In the pre-digital era, someone's family photos were either (at one extreme) thrown into the proverbial shoebox with (hopefully) something written on the back of the prints giving some information about who was in the picture and when it was taken. At the other extreme, there were those who meticulously created photo albums that thoroughly documented "Who, What, When," and maybe even sometimes "Why" for each photo. Most of us probably are someplace in between. The net result was something that subsequent generations could look at and enjoy, particularly the situation where an adult is looking at photos of their own childhood.

My family photos from 1975 – 2003 were carefully documented and entered into photo albums with acid-free sleeves, etc. They are in good shape, and even with some dye shifting, should serve adult children and their children (and perhaps beyond?) well.

From 2003 onward, I have many more images managed through Lightroom, with keywords, location information, captions, etc. And in the place of physical albums, there are virtual albums online at SmugMug and a nice folder tree of exported images on a local hard drive.

Physical albums can be found by one's heirs and perused as desired. But there's no guarantee that the SmugMug albums will continue to be available (someone has to pay the annual bill, which may not be something somebody else would wish to do for very long). And as far as local exported files are concerned, it's one thing to have someone look at the photo themselves by double clicking on the image file, but it's another thing to expect that they would know how to look at the metadata to find out who's in the photo, when it was taken, where, etc.

So I have been thinking about how to leave the digital "albums" in a form that are reasonably easily accessible by those who may be tech literate but not terribly conversant with Lightroom or other digital asset management software. Given the number images involved, I don't think it is feasible to create printed books of photos… It would be prohibitive to do so.

Although I haven't been able to find discussions of this topic, I'm sure I am far from the first person who has thought about this issue. I would love to have the thoughts and advice of this wonderful community.

 

[Replytoken]

And remember ... unless the image contains a picture of the person (or other direct family members) that you are handing the SSD to, they will probably never look at it again.

I think that many would agree with your full post that not a lot of folks are going to be interested in our art images when we are gone, but I suspect that if we just focus on family images, then as you have called out, there may be a lot of interest. When my mother moved out of her house about a decade ago and it was getting cleaned out for sale, I made sure to grab as many family photos as I could. I have a number of nieces and nephews that may be interested in learning more about their family history, and scanning and sharing those images will be a major retirement project of mine when I can finally hang up my spurs from my day job. I suspect that common formats and wide disbursement, as I mentioned above, will assist in getting these images to survive. Or, I could at least get them in a format where they can easily be printed out if folks desire to do so. Otherwise, only on lucky person gets to have the original copy that I managed to save and store. We have to do what we can and try to make decisions as best we can knowing what we know. And most importantly, migrate the data forward to newer devices/formats while we can.

--Ken

 

[Paul_DS256]

The world is awash with images, and they aren't as unique and valuable as they once were

This is true but there is something unique for the photographer that wanted to share it with viewers. It reminds me of why in competitions, or even challenges, they ask for a title to provide context.

So, what I'm taking from your point is that when I do save/share my images for posterity, I need to include what motivated me to take the picture.

As an example of what I'm talking about here's an image that one of my clubs discussed without seeing the title. The opinions completely changed when the title was revealed.

I'm enjoying the thread.

 

[jslesinger]

@GregJ: the reason blu-ray still has relevance is that it is immune to some electromagetic fields that would destroy magnetic media. (this includes thermonuclear war, heaven forfend),. also blu-ray hasnt stood still for the past 10 years: capacities of up to 100G and archival stability of 1000 years (claimed at least) keep it still relevant. 100G may be small by hard drive standards but its enoughto archive for a lot of jpgs (>8000 12 meg jpgs to be precise) . there are lots of issues about leaving a photographic legacy but for archival stability, is still see it as contender. as long as blu-ray drives remain available, that is.

 

[Jim Lancaster]

I am 51 (as of two days ago) my kids (including step kids) range in age from 18 to 31. When I discussed with them previously, all object to printed books.
All prefer a trimmed down library of images. So in my system, that is 2 stars or more. Which is roughly 7,000 out of the 30,000 images I have kept. I am fairly ruthless in deleting images. I peaked at over 100,000 images
I figure the kids will further reduce/prune the images using the meta-data in the images. Hence why I am going to use JPEGs with all the meta-data included in it. One thing to note: JPEG as a standard is about 40 years old. The technology to store JPEGs has changed, but the format of the data has not.

Tim

Tim, I'm 65 and my 3 sons have all told me very explicitly that they do not want physical photos. They want everything in some kind of digital format. None of them have expressed any interest in learning Lightroom, so my plan is to leave them the 3 star edited images with all the metadata included saved to full size JPG files like you. I've made the task a little larger by scanning the 10,000 slides and negatives my father and I accumulated before switching to digital. I'm still in the process of grading and editing what I've scanned, but I'm nearing the end. Like you, I expect the boys will end up with about 7,000 images.

What has been glossed over a bit in this thread is the sheer amount of space that physical media takes up. When I finally got started addressing my own situation, I discovered that the lions share of the closet space in 3 bedrooms of our 4 bedroom house were taken up by photo albums, bankers boxes of photos, slides, movies, projectors, etc. It was relatively organized, but it was still a mountain of stuff to wade through. If I had dropped dead before addressing it, there is no question in my mind that ALL of it would have been thrown away.

But I don't blame my boys. My parents (born in 1929 & 1930) inherited very few photos from their parents, but they both took pictures in a wide variety of formats and left the slides, negatives, and prints mostly un-annotated and loosely organized in boxes. By the time it was passed down to me, I had already created exponentially more photos and movies and videos in an even wider number of formats. So back in March I started sending everything off to be scanned. When I got the scans back and imported into Lightroom, I chunked the originals. I chunked the slides, the negatives, the prints, the photo albums--all of it.

Good luck with your own project,

Jim

 

[Califdan]

And, still left out of this thread is where do you save these JPG's?

Waaaay to many to burn on CD's or DVD's or BlueRay's and those technologies are fading fast anyway.

Do you buy a portable USB drive for each kid and copy the exported images there after remembering to update those drives every now and again to get the newer images?

Do you post them on some photo sharing site like Flickr, Google Photos, or SmugMug? Then when you pass on, you have be wary of who will own your account there. The fast moving trend is that once you die, no one owns those accounts and they are locked from EVERYONE leven if they know the password) untill some court grants access to an heir and your heirs will have way more pressing problems at that time than worrying about a Google Photos Account. BTW, it is now reccomended that your Will or Trust documents specifically list all the online accounts that are part of your estate and explicitly state who you are granting ownership to when you go.

Do you create your own web site and post them there? Of course someone will have to renew your domain registration from time to time and will probablty also need to pay storage fees after you go.

Do you just leave one drive attached to your computer clearly labeled as "Family Archive Photos a copy of which is to be given to each heir"?

Anyway, a lot to think about.

 

[Jim Lancaster]

My current workflow is to import my images to Lr using my laptop, then sync them down to LrC where I have better control over the physical files. I also periodically reconcile the image counts in Lr (cloud) and LrC (desktop). This includes reconciling original files and virtual copies. Then I use Windows 11 File History (formerly Windows Backup) to backup the LrC organized images to an external USB drive. That gives me three copies of every image: cloud, local computer, and external USB drive.

Sometime soon I plan to export the better images, including edits and metadata to full sized JPGs and save them to thumb drives and pass them out to the boys. (If they show any interest in the "master" copies stored in my LrC folder, they know where to find them.) I've already handed out thumb drives to my cousins that contain the better images I have of their families and pictures from clan gatherings going back to the 1950s. What anyone does with the contents of a thumb drive that I give them is up to them. I feel like I have done what I can, and I have saved my family from ever having to deal with the incredible mess left to me by my parents that I only made exponentially worse.

I know full well what a fool's errand it is to burn CDs, DVDs, or Blueray. I had my dad's old 8mm movies scanned to DVD shortly after he died in 2003. The scans were of such low quality that I sent them out recently to be scanned again. However, this time I threw away the physical media once I was satisfied with the scan quality so that no one else could be tempted to scan them again in the future. I've done this for over 10,000 slides and negatives and over 6,000' of 8mm, super 8, and 16mm movie film. (And now I'm starting in on the prints.)

I do currently share some of my photos on several Adobe MyPortfolio.com sites and old movies on Youtube, but I don't really care what happens to any of it after I'm gone. Like my old emails, I doubt anyone will be much interested. A writer friend of mind told me once that in 100 years no one is going to know a thing about us or our kids and grandkids. Unlike our parents and the generations before them, we will have left behind no physical trace of our existence. No letters, no photos, no physical books written on acid free paper. It kind of puts it all into perspective.

 

[Califdan]

Then I use Windows 11 File History (formerly Windows Backup) to backup the LrC organized images to an external USB drive. That gives me three copies of every image: cloud, local computer, and external USB drive.

These copies do not contain edits or updates you did in LrC. I'm not sure though if you made changes in LR before syncing down to LrC if those changes are baked into the file that lands on your hard drive or not, but I'm pretty sure they do not and the image file that lands on your local drive is the "as imported" image. In other words, if you took a lot of time to enter Titles and Captions, these copies will not contain those entries.

Sometime soon I plan to export the better images, including edits and metadata to full sized JPGs and save them to thumb drives and pass them out to the boys

Porbably the best idea. However, every year or five you should repreat the process to get new images.

 

[Jim Lancaster]

These copies do not contain edits or updates you did in LrC.

Yes, that's true, but the exports to JPG that I deliver will.

I'm not sure though if you made changes in LR before syncing down to LrC if those changes are baked into the file that lands on your hard drive or not, but I'm pretty sure they do not and the image file that lands on your local drive is the "as imported" image. In other words, if you took a lot of time to enter Titles and Captions, these copies will not contain those entries.

I do most of my initial editing in Lr because I find it quicker to use, then I do the finish edits in LrC where I can use presets to fill in creator/copyright and location metadata and also save the metadata to physical files. Interestingly, File History backs the files up whenever they change, adding a UTC timestamp to the end of the filename. Looking through the File History folder containing my Lightroom filesI can see the original sync, then duplicates for every metadata change I made to an image.

Porbably the best idea. However, every year or five you should repreat the process to get new images.

Yes, absolutely.

 

[tspear]

And, still left out of this thread is where do you save these JPG's?

Waaaay to many to burn on CD's or DVD's or BlueRay's and those technologies are fading fast anyway.

Do you buy a portable USB drive for each kid and copy the exported images there after remembering to update those drives every now and again to get the newer images?

Do you post them on some photo sharing site like Flickr, Google Photos, or SmugMug? Then when you pass on, you have be wary of who will own your account there. The fast moving trend is that once you die, no one owns those accounts and they are locked from EVERYONE leven if they know the password) untill some court grants access to an heir and your heirs will have way more pressing problems at that time than worrying about a Google Photos Account. BTW, it is now reccomended that your Will or Trust documents specifically list all the online accounts that are part of your estate and explicitly state who you are granting ownership to when you go.

Do you create your own web site and post them there? Of course someone will have to renew your domain registration from time to time and will probablty also need to pay storage fees after you go.

Do you just leave one drive attached to your computer clearly labeled as "Family Archive Photos a copy of which is to be given to each heir"?

Anyway, a lot to think about.

Will already covers online account ownership.
Digital assets, I already have a recovery system in place for the kids to be able to access everything online.
Folders organized, and noted for what they might want to keep, versus what is mine (e.g. source code for applications I developed, I doubt they care about it).

But yes, the issues you raise are important.

Tim

 

[tspear]

My current workflow is to import my images to Lr using my laptop, then sync them down to LrC where I have better control over the physical files. I also periodically reconcile the image counts in Lr (cloud) and LrC (desktop). This includes reconciling original files and virtual copies. Then I use Windows 11 File History (formerly Windows Backup) to backup the LrC organized images to an external USB drive. That gives me three copies of every image: cloud, local computer, and external USB drive.

Sometime soon I plan to export the better images, including edits and metadata to full sized JPGs and save them to thumb drives and pass them out to the boys. (If they show any interest in the "master" copies stored in my LrC folder, they know where to find them.) I've already handed out thumb drives to my cousins that contain the better images I have of their families and pictures from clan gatherings going back to the 1950s. What anyone does with the contents of a thumb drive that I give them is up to them. I feel like I have done what I can, and I have saved my family from ever having to deal with the incredible mess left to me by my parents that I only made exponentially worse.

I know full well what a fool's errand it is to burn CDs, DVDs, or Blueray. I had my dad's old 8mm movies scanned to DVD shortly after he died in 2003. The scans were of such low quality that I sent them out recently to be scanned again. However, this time I threw away the physical media once I was satisfied with the scan quality so that no one else could be tempted to scan them again in the future. I've done this for over 10,000 slides and negatives and over 6,000' of 8mm, super 8, and 16mm movie film. (And now I'm starting in on the prints.)

I do currently share some of my photos on several Adobe MyPortfolio.com sites and old movies on Youtube, but I don't really care what happens to any of it after I'm gone. Like my old emails, I doubt anyone will be much interested. A writer friend of mind told me once that in 100 years no one is going to know a thing about us or our kids and grandkids. Unlike our parents and the generations before them, we will have left behind no physical trace of our existence. No letters, no photos, no physical books written on acid free paper. It kind of puts it all into perspective.

What scanning solution/company did you utilize?

Tim

 

[farmreporter]

I find that only hard copies of photos get any real access. I too have thousands of pics on my hard drive, and know that they will probably never be seen once I am gone.
So, I have started to go through my photos and get the ones I want to be remembered printed at Black's (I am in Canada).
I then put them in a photo album that has a place to write beside each shot.
I actually have many categories of photo albums - family, pets, our farm, travels, etc. That way it makes for a more logical sorting system when each album has a theme.
This is taking time, but, hopefully these albums will not sit in a dark closet forever but rather will be accessed occasionally.
Everyone has digital photos but actual hard copies are rare now. I think it is important to have hard copies for the future because the digital ones will not be accessible. We are living history, and it is our duty to record it.

 

[Martin Owen]

I too have given this much thought, but ultimately I think all for nothing. I have got lots of old family photos - back to the 1800s) and I have digitized these, but have also kept the originals. I have created an online family tree and lots of info and media is in this. I have details of how to access for the survivors. I have digitized virtually all my slides and photos taken over the past 50+ years. I have shared these with many friends. I also kept all slides. However I thind that when it comes to it my kids will not rescue anything. I’m in the USA and my kids both live in New Zealand. My son has an interest in the family history and may (stress may) be willing to either access the on line stuff or ship the physical items down under. My daughter at her own admission is really interested. So I trust to my step nieces and nephews here to do the right thing, but I don’t think they’ll have any idea what’s what.

 

[johnrellis]

So I trust to my step nieces and nephews here to do the right thing, but I don’t think they’ll have any idea what’s what.

I think you're too pessimistic. My mother used the first generation of genealogy software starting in the 1980s (the LDS' PAF), and I paid no attention (other than to be the IT guy). But after she died, my siblings and I really appreciated all the effort she put in, and we were able to tie lots of heirlooms and pictures together using the the genealogy.

 

[Martin Owen]

I think you're too pessimistic. My mother used the first generation of genealogy software starting in the 1980s (the LDS' PAF), and I paid no attention (other than to be the IT guy). But after she died, my siblings and I really appreciated all the effort she put in, and we were able to tie lots of heirlooms and pictures together using the the genealogy.

I’ll keep everything crossed ;-)

 

[Replytoken]

I too have given this much thought, but ultimately I think all for nothing. I have got lots of old family photos - back to the 1800s) and I have digitized these, but have also kept the originals. I have created an online family tree and lots of info and media is in this. I have details of how to access for the survivors. I have digitized virtually all my slides and photos taken over the past 50+ years. I have shared these with many friends. I also kept all slides. However I thind that when it comes to it my kids will not rescue anything. I’m in the USA and my kids both live in New Zealand. My son has an interest in the family history and may (stress may) be willing to either access the on line stuff or ship the physical items down under. My daughter at her own admission is really interested. So I trust to my step nieces and nephews here to do the right thing, but I don’t think they’ll have any idea what’s what.

Do they know how to migrate the data from your site to another one (or that they should)? Once you are gone, it is not like the site which is hosting your images will be accessible to them indefinitely.

--Ken