Your trip Photos! How important are they ?

Hi Michael

Since the introduction of digital photography, I personally have not had any photos printed, but keep them backed up on 3 portable hard drives.

I think you will find that this is a trend that many are taking and many of the old photo shop are now like the Dodo.

Mind you we have many photo albums from the pre digital days and they now sit in a cupboards and we have not looked at them for many, many years.




Cheers



Stephen

Sorry to say but most people find other peoples photos boring unless they are in them and these days with digital there are so many I suggest storing all the photos on the cloud safe from damage/loss and take up nobodies space the only thing is to leave someone the password to the cloud so they can access them if needed All of your existing pics can be scanned and placed on the cloud if your adult kids travel in the future to some of the places in your photos they will probably look at them then to compare the changes with the passing of time
Cheers Steve

My photos are of great value to me. When on walks, and I have to cross a fast flowing stream, I say to my husband "if I fall, grab my backpack - it has our cameras in it. Don't worry about me - cameras first." After hearing of a friend losing his camera and holiday snaps when his canoe overturned on Lawn Hill Gorge, I have taken a small cheap camera to take on canoes and small boats.

While my family are not really interested in our travel snaps, they are a wonderful memento of our trip for me. I share with others in my blogs and Travelogues, on forums and Facebook pages in reply to questions, and I put a section of my Flickr page.

What might be not of interest in 2 to 10 years might be of immense interest in 50 years.
We have family albums from WW2 and earlier and they hold most people's attention.
Our own go back over 50 years and are pretty important to us.

Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 motorhome

"A written note outlives the longest memory" That's what they taught me many years ago. My time spent travelling is special to me and even from the days of film where you were so measured with your shots, it's very easy to look back across a span of 40 years and think "Jeez, where in the hell was that and who are those people"!

To me a well kept journal goes hand in hand with a good collection of photos. Each inform the other. The one huge benefit of digital photos these days (apart from being able to shoot a thousand shots at zero cost) is simply the meta data associated with each. The time date and GPS location can really get you out of a pickle if you've got the odd issue of memory like me.

The only downside of digital is that unless you want to utilise the smart tele, it's often hard to just pull the photos out for people like you could with the old album.

I've found a great way to display photos in an interesting way and one that captures peoples attention is to make a coffee table book of the trip/year/event with one of the many on line publishing company's like Blurb, Book Smart or even Officeworks. They are a great way to highlight your favourite moments and Vik and I often find ourselves thumbing through the books remembering or dreaming of next years trip and the places yet to be visited.

My favourite photos from trips past

Cheers

Mick

I'd like to think my trip, and other photos, are very important to me, though I probably don't give them the care or attention they deserve. Have scanned some old prints and slides that are close to 50 years old, with some success, as well as some black 'n white prints during 1930's, from my late parents bush walking collection.

Image longevity is a worry, because who knows how long a digital copy lasts, but saving on multiple hard drives & mediums might be the best option. Have heard of issues with jpeg images & CD storage but how long before their content's inevitable demise?

As for our family keeping any or all of our photos, they'll be sick of chucking out the rest of my gear to worry about a few USB's & hard drives.

Bob

Funny thing, I get home & find that I'm not even interested in my own photos, so I can fully understand that others would be even less enthusiastic.
In the "old days", having sat through numerous insufferably boring slide nights of friends holidays, I would never push my photos on anybody.

I'll tell you who finds your trip photos important - other potential travellers to the area. On ExplorOz we encourage you to share those trip photos in Places as a lasting record. This is a wonderful opportunity to pay it forward by sharing your photos to help other people get a feel for what is in an area. You can even post a short review to share your impressions on the Places.

To add a photo to Places you can do it 2 ways:
1. after your trip, go to ExplorOz Places (either in the ExplorOz Traveller app or on the ExplorOz website) and open the specific pages of places you went to. There is a button to "Upload Photos & Files" and if you took them on your phone, iPad or tablet you can upload them directly from your photo gallery using the app. If you have used a standard camera then you need to extract the images off your camera onto your computer and then when you click Upload from the website it will prompt you to select the images off your computer.
2. during your trip if you take photos using your phone, tablet, or iPad and you also run the ExplorOz Traveller app, then you can directly upload photos from your device to the Place at the location and if there is no Place in the system for your location you can create one by using the Drop Pin for your current location.

So there are over 80,000 Places in the system - and many don't yet have photos but lots do. Wouldn't it be great if we could photos in all of them? Bet there are even some very obvious ones that don't have photos and many of our ExplorOz faithful would have them in their archives. Unlimited photos can be added to Places - you can caption them with dates which helps see how a place changes over time but also throughout the different seasons.

Thanks everyone for the feedback and diverse thoughts on the subject. I myself prefer video and I have taken a fair amount back since 1997 when my first son was born. To me video is alive, just the same as it was when it was taken and can show a lot photos can't. Photos are also important but I suppose I'm a bit like Allan, I'd rather be living it than recording it. Thankfully everyone is different and we get that diversity so we can leave some great recorded history for generations to come. regards, Michael.