gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

I did that with my mom's two family albums and a bunch of prints we had accumulated over the years, digitizing them for "posterity". They are there if anyone in the family wants them.

John N Loc: HP14 3QF Stokenchurch, UK

I do this on my facebook page, but I try to tell a short story, a documentary if you like, with the post. Individual explantions (if needed) are alongside the images.

StanMac Loc: Tennessee

I agree that images made today will be of interest in the future. But data is ephemeral. Unless those bits and bytes are translated into an archival, visual hard copy they may not even be retrievable for viewing in the future.

Stan

ddgm Loc: Hamilton, Ontario & Fort Myers, FL

I am digitizing minutes of meetings books that started in 1845. I made a DIY copy stand and use a Canon 5D III and Sigma 50mm Macro lens tethered to my computer which is working pretty well. I could not imagine doing this with film. By the way, the records of 1845 still can be read easily but some of the penmanship is iffy.

BebuLamar

You can write all the 0's and 1's on a scroll. Someone in the future if interested can reconstruct your image perfectly.

pendennis

Well reasoned. Since the "computer era" started in the early 50's, data has been accumulated on countless types of media - cards, tapes, discs, paper... Now, for the electronic data, there are no more tape and disk drives. Paper card readers are no more. Where is a working tape drive? Can you even find a card sorter except in a museum?

My former company has a climate-controlled warehouse filled with archival documentation, but the only data readable now are those hard documents.

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

At some point in the future, when data storage farms become as big as cities, a master data purger will have to be assigned to go in and clean up the mess. Hopefully, the mess will allow itself to be cleaned up. 😉😉

John N Loc: HP14 3QF Stokenchurch, UK

That, or the cleaner will unplug it.

avflinsch Loc: Hamilton, New Jersey

Getting over the idea that photos were now essentially 'free' was my biggest hurdle when switching to digital.

MrPhotog

Without captions a good deal of information is missed.

With prints and tintypes we could write a paragraph on the back.

With sheet film and glass plates we could scribble a date and location near the edge in India ink.

With electronic media we often have just a filename or limited exif info area. Some software allows saving extended comments, but requires the same software to read it. And who knows if that software will be supported in the next operating system upgrade.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Is that not good?
Ever since photography was invented most all of it has been documentary.

Fredrick Loc: Former NYC, now San Francisco Bay Area

Identify the one person in your family who is interested in genealogy and leave your photos to them.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

I've been an active photographer for about 65 years...since I was about 7 years old. About 6 years ago, after I retired from life as an engineer (where I used photography extensively as a documentation and training tool), I entered a new life as a substitute teacher. The assignments I accepted eventually limited to a single STEAM high school, where I have come to know all of the teachers and most of the students. And that includes the art teachers. That's when I got seriously interested in photography as art, even though I have taken a number of classes over the years. I've long been interested in being a "good" photographer, but only recently become really motivated to be artistic.

Now please understand...that doesn't mean that I'm only just now interested in things like proper exposure, composition, and story. That's all part of documentation also. But now I'm also interested in things like motivation, vision, heart, and impact.

Documentation is not new, nor is it new to UHH. To the contrary, it's what UHH is. 99+ % of what gets posted here is to say, "Look at what I saw today." There is nothing inherently wrong with that. Travel photography is documentation. So is family photography, as has been pointed out. I would assert that wedding photography is mostly documentary photography, with a little artistic flavoring added. From its beginning, photography was a documentary curiosity. A small number of folks worked to take it in an artistic direction later. For that matter, a lot of painting is documentary more than anything else. Leonardo's work was, at its heart, documentary.

This is really a good thing. Lots of people need or want to document. Only a very limited few desire or can afford to be artists. You can build an industry around documenters. There are too few artists to support any kind of industry, even if you throw in the hobbyists and wannabees.

So I think your observation is accurate, except for your impression of the timing. Apple and the other cellphone companies have found a gold mine supporting documentarians.

netsailer Loc: Tampa, FL

My dad was a photographer and I was taking pictures by age 5 or 6, and developing/printing them. Have pictures of my home town (Newton, MA) from the 1940s. Things like parades, downtown. Even filmed (8 mm) the last train to go through the town (the conductor even waved at me, as I stood on a bridge). Your post and the other responses makes me think I ought to contact the town management and see if they would like some archival photos and films.

goldenyears Loc: Lake Osewgo

Over a period of 20 years I have received thousands of photo submissions for my aviation website. Most are scanned images. One of the contributors was a laborer in Germany working on a demolition job, where he found a box of old photographs in a dumpster on the site. Thankfully he scanned them and sent me images. A few contributors got rid of their storage problem by shipping the original photos and slides to me. They didn't want them returned, so now I've got the problem. I can't make myself put them in the dumpster or try to sell them in case one of them contacts me and asks "do you still have...." Not one yet has asked that.