Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/02/07
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Jim Brick wrote: >>> WOW Ted... talk about hanging it all out for the world to see. But what you said was, of course, exactly correct. We all have "brain farts" now and again. I was thinking like you the first time around. Basically, so what if my photographs don't last 100 years. But sometimes, the greatest time, is sitting down with a big box of old pictures and digging through them. I have a couple of boxes like that in my darkroom. All of my photographs from Junior High, High School, College, etc. The other day I was helping Jillian (my daughter) with something in the darkroom and I started looking through the boxes. Every photograph I picked up I said "see this... this is when I was... and we were doing..." Talk about memories from heaven. These photographs ARE my life. And I have similar boxes of pictures, negatives, and slides of when my kids were growing up. Photographs are priceless. <<< For another example of the value of photographs that outlast the photographer, the Philiadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences operates an "image bank" (VIREO = VIsual REsources in Ornithology) consisting of photographs of birds of the world. Their North American coverage is nearly complete, for the rest of the world they're well on the way to decent coverage. It's a "snapshot" of wildlife during our time, which may be used by researchers and educators at minimal cost, and is also available to commercial publishers. Commercial use of photographs in the VIREO collection include numerous field guides, magazines, books, CDs, and other publications, as well as being available for making display prints. It's a significant source of revenue for the Museum. VIREO depends entirely on donations from photographers (or photographers' estates) for their collection, and they treasure each photograph. Working with Eastman Kodak and duPont they have implemented state-of-the-art archival storage facilities. Do they care if photographs fade? You bet they do! Doug Herr Sacramento http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/telyt