Now a days many people rely upon electronic storage for a lot of their data, myself included. Have you ever had one of those storage devices fail? Or worse yet, completely go out of fashion and no longer be available?
This happened to me with Kodak. When they went bankrupt all of a sudden my Kodak raw files were no longer readable by any software, gone forever. Do you happen to be charmingly antique like I am and have boxes full of of old images?
Are those images perfect? No, but I still have them. Remember all the pictures we had on the walls of our homes growing up? There were our school pictures. The vacation images. Pictures of our relatives. When I walk into a lot of homes now a days, the walls are blank.
Those images upon the walls while we were growing up, were part of our roots. The images surrounded us in the dinning room. Yes we dined as a family too, but that’s a whole ‘nuther subject.
Remember The Floppy Disk?
Those little buggers only held 80 kilobytes of information. One of my current images will not even fit on a floppy… Then remember the Zip disk? And The CD? None of the storage mediums above are still used… But my Print of that wild Bull Elk from three feet away still lives on.
Enter Our Current Situation
The current trend is “Cloud Storage”… this storage medium makes me pretty nervous. Not just with the “need a lawyer in your back pocket” terms of service agreements, but with the threat of failure. Also? We need droves of power and internet speeds to access that data.
Below is an image of Steve Jobs and one of his first Computers on the left, and a pic of the latest version of the iPad, on the right. Steve is no longer with us, and his first computer is no longer used. Yet the new iPad is now far, far more capable than his first computer.
In 2018 Data On The Internet Was 4o Times Larger Than 2009
In 2020 one third of all data had passed through the cloud. We had created over 35 zetabytes of data. One Zetabyte equals 1,073,741,824 terabyte. I know that most of you have zero idea how large these numbers actually are.
I’ve personally had to use numbers like these in my gaming career to develop odds and pay outs for some of the departments in was in charge of. When it comes to computer data these numbers are mind bending, even to me! They are even larger than the decillions I was dealing with. A decillion is a 1 with 33 zeros behind it.
So if you’re saying to yourself, yeah, yeah, yeah Garrett, what’s the point? We are not messing around in these kinds of numbers! I’m sorry but we are already there. As computers and Artificial Intelligence continues to evolve, computing the number of functions capable per second will continue to rise.
Yet My Printed Images Survive!!
I do not need a device to see them like I did my slides. Some of my old Photographs have yellowed over time… however that issue has now been solved. Now we can print images better than ever before. Due to the advances in Photo papers, that yellowing is no longer an issue, if you use the right papers.
The 8mm home movies that were popular when I was a child have also gone by the wayside. Yet my prints from back in the day have survived. Also there are ways to scan my negatives now even more advanced than years ago. Plus I can now do this myself, and far better than just a few years ago!
Five Reasons For Printing Your Photographs
Number one: When you print your images, they become a physical item you hold in your hand which immediately becomes more valuable. Those images come to life. They hold a place in your heart. How many pictures do you have on your phone? How many times do you look at them?
When was the last time you scrolled back to some of the first pictures on your phone? I Made you think didn’t I? However you look at the print on the wall of your home or office every day. Digital images have far less value. How many digital images do you scroll past on a daily basis?
Do you remember that last digital image you saw online that really made an impact upon you? Now go and try to find it. Good luck with that. The image has become digital dust.
Number two: Technology is not very dependable. In my paragraphs above I’ve stated how much technology has changed in just a few years. Every single time you open a jpeg file it looses some of its quality. It’s impossible to know exactly when the jpeg file will become outdated. How much would you have to scramble to save all of your jpegs?
You do not really own your files saved on a cloud service. How long would it take to download terabytes of files off of one cloud system to place somewhere else? Do you have enough hard drive space to store them? How much would you pay the cloud service when they hold you hostage with control of all of your files?
Number three: As a Photographer your work will improve exponentially! Digital files online can hide multitudes of errors! Printing your images will expose those errors so that you can improve your work.
I’ve taught many great Photographers that did not print, until the day people wanted prints of their work. Then all of a sudden they were mortified at the errors they had to repair.
As a Photographer I can not explain to you the feelings that well up inside, once you complete your art, full circle. From concept, to capture, to edit, and finally a copy of your visions in your hand… This has been a very emotional experience for me personally.
Number four: When you view images online they have been degraded by what ever service you might use to save bandwidth, which saves that service money. When someone else views your images online you have zero control of what device they might be using to see your images.
The only way to confidently know your image is being seen they way you intend it to be seen is with a properly printed image. Wally World and other discount printers will not print your image correctly. Their version will be “off” in many ways. Color, detail, and paper quality are just three of those ways.
The very first time I was able to print my image exactly as I saw that image on my Computer Screen was mind blowing! I was told for years, by what I thought were high quality printers, that they could not match what I saw on my monitor. They were wrong!
Number five: I did not spend the thousands of dollars I have invested in Camera Equipment, my PhotoSafaris, or my education, in order to simply post those images online! If I just wanted to post images online the latest smart phone camera will do that just fine. I could have saved a lot of money!
I do not personally wish to just create a snapshot. I wish to create a Photograph. A work of art. My interpretation of what I see and how it made me feel. My prints reveal that to anyone that gazes upon them. (at least I hope so)
We can not buy anymore time either! Photography can record time. My home base for over five decades now, has been Las Vegas, Nevada. I can not tell you how many pictures I have of hotels on the Vegas Strip that are no longer there. Blown up! History that is gone forever.
The image of O’Sheas above was not any big landmark hotel on the strip. But it was a pretty cool “joint”… good food at a bargain, entertainment, jobs for people. It’s gone now, but my image lives on.
Photograph – From The Greek – Light Writing
From my perspective light writing also includes a visual graph of that light writing, in the form of a print. I can hold that print in my hand or hang it upon a wall. I do not think rotating digital images on a screen does any justice to a photograph. Images like that do not impress you when looking at paintings either.
Standing in front a Painting or a Photograph or a piece of Sculpture has far, far more impact upon you, than digital pictures rotating on a screen. You become part of the art. It fills your soul. You can create multiple reactions or emotions from the experience.
I fall asleep in front of rotating images on a screen all of the time. Especially looking at the most beautiful golf courses in the world…
