My parents have saved tons of boxes of old family photographs growing up. They are fun to look at from time to time, because it used to be a bit harder to create photos. I wonder if the next generation of people will collect moments the same way we used to, seeing how quick and easy things are posted online. I’m sure many of them don’t even have pictures saved locally somewhere and rely on social media and the cloud to store their past.
Even those who use social media like to look through their galleries on their phones or online and reminisce from time to time. Those photos might seem mundane in the moment but they still become preserved memories of the past eventually. They don’t lose value to the people in them because photos became easier to take now.
I’m quite avoidant of the cloud myself, but I wouldn’t assume that no one saves things locally anymore. It’s also possible to have digital photos printed and put into a physical album.
I think digital pictures are gonna cause a lot of problems with trust, especially if you have a bit of paranoia.
I watched a Vsauce video on the idea of implanting false memories and I got scared af. Like I always mentally add a “this info is from X source” sort of “tag” to the memory, but after learning of that concept, it made me more paranoid. I have childhood photos (in physical form) that I kinda doubt if its me. For all I know, my mother could be not my real mother and those are fake photos to remove any doubt.
Imagine the future of internet photos? AI generated fake photos? Are your parents really your parents or just kidnappers?
(Okay maybe I watched too many documentaries on kidnappings)
We get prints of photos of our daughter and from holidays for exactly this reason. Snapfish does pretty cheap prints, so although they’re not amazing quality they’ll still do for having a look through every now and then.
My wife compiles the best of the years’ photos into a calendar and sends them to grandparents, etc. Always a big hit.
We have them favorited and they show up on our AppleTV’s screensaver so we see them all the time. Another big hit with the family and friends.
I have almost no physical photos. I have maybe 10 physical photos, total. I was pretty early on the whole digitize everything bandwagon. And have lost most of them before I got the hang of how to protect them from accidental loss.
Every now and then I want to take a look at one of the photos I’ve taken. I’ll wind up spending a few hours going down memory lane.
Photos are a moment sealed in time. Young folks may not value them right now, but eventually they’ll value them more.
I’m an untrusting old curmudgeon, so I store my files locally, for the most part. Folks storing them online? Either they’ll get burned and lose them, or not.
I feels like people who store their photo on socmed(like insta) do have a habbit of keeping photo, just in different medium, and they believe the company will do a good job of keeping their data, or until the company decided to ban them. They don’t keep physical photo because it’s pretty much a chores to have it print, and sometimes costly too if you want it to be in good quality that normal printer can’t pull off.
They do however keep picture on their phone though, i don’t believe most people just delete the picture locally after they posted it.
I find it scary how a lot of people don’t have a good permanent storage solution for their photos. If they lose their phone, all photos are gone. Many don’t even know how to transfer files between devices since everything went wireless and that process is not as intuitive anymore.
I don’t think so.
On the one hand, digital images seem more likely to get lost or forgotten sooner or later. This seems likely to me even when they are uploaded to social media platforms—I consider it highly doubtful that these media will archive images over long periods of time.
On the other hand, they don’t seem to have the same significance as physical photos: I’ve never actually had anyone show me pictures on a screen, but I’ve often had people show me photo albums while telling anecdotes from the past.
Either way, I think the way we deal with photos has changed. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
I’ve never actually had anyone show me pictures on a screen,
Not even of their cats?
One or two on their phones, but I mean the tradition of looking at pictures together and reminiscing about the past. I don’t get the impression that people still do that today.
I do! Cast my photos to the TV, turn on a slideshow and just look at them and remember.
Nope. The digital age has created people with super short attention spans.
You get a good number of data hoarders after a picture provider goes down/enshittifies. Yes, they’ll lose at least one large collection of photos. But I suspect many folks realize they could be banned, lose their account, etc, and take some effort to save things that matter.
Earlier this year I collected virtually every photo I’ve ever taken from every device I own and put them on my immich server and it was so worth it. I spend so much time looking at my old stuff now that it’s all there. If anything I think having easy access to take and view photos just lets you connect to them more because you can so easily go back to any point in your life
