Now you see it ...

… but how long will that digital photo last?

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette photo illustration/JOHN SYKES JR. - To illustrate Nathania Sawyer's story about how to organize digital photos. A cover shot of old photographs and a "selfie" on a phone. Also, photos of some other ways of displaying photos.
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette photo illustration/JOHN SYKES JR. - To illustrate Nathania Sawyer's story about how to organize digital photos. A cover shot of old photographs and a "selfie" on a phone. Also, photos of some other ways of displaying photos.

Researchers at ancestry.com estimate that in the 1930s, people took approximately 1 billion photographs. That number grew to about 3 billion in the 1960s and 86 billion by the year 2000 after digital cameras became readily available in the 1990s. Today, they say the number has skyrocketed to more than 380 billion. Facebook reports that its users have uploaded more than 250 billion photos, and estimates that the site receives 350 million new photos each day.

Mike McCoy of Bedford Camera in Little Rock says that smartphones and tablets with built-in cameras are responsible for the explosive growth in photography. "It's in your pocket; it's in your purse ... you can just pick it up and take a photograph at any time," he explains.

MORE IS THE NEW LESS

The problem with being able to take so many photos is that the sheer volume discourages many people from archiving and labeling them for posterity. Plus, constant changes in technology and digital storage systems create a concern that future generations may lack the means to view them. Remember 5 ¼-inch floppy disks?

The selfie; the funny pet photo; family, friends, food, flora and fauna; events and scenery -- everyday life has never been so thoroughly documented. Historians are hoping people will take the time to store, tag and label their photos to educate and entertain future generations.

Steve Perdue, head of the genealogy and local history department at Saline County Library, is concerned about the future access of all these digital images. "I think that most photos will disappear in the future and archivists are going to have a hard time recovering photos from this generation. I have photos in albums from the 1920s and even further back, but I am not sure this generation will have that to look back on," he says.

DOWNLOAD, UPLOAD, ORGANIZE, PRINT AND REPEAT

Ashley Hackshaw, a blogger out of Bryson City, N.C., prefers to print all of her photos and created a detailed system to organize and print her collection (see accompanying story).

But not everyone is as organized as she.

"Who has the time?" asks Allison Montiel, a mother of four who lives in Fort Smith. Dawn Nahlen of North Little Rock, an associate publisher for Elsevier, an academic publishing company, and mother of two boys, agrees. She stores her photos on her camera's memory card. Nahlen says, "I upload the ones I want to do something with onto my computer and put them on Facebook or print them. But, I tend to leave everything on the card as my archive."

Does she worry that something will happen to the memory card? "I think most busy moms put them on Facebook for that reason. Not just 'here's the thousandth photo of my kid jumping into the lake,' but also I think it is a way to archive," she says.

Archiving is more of a priority for Doris Krain, an event photographer in Little Rock, who stores everything on her computer. She says, "I download all photos to my computer into file folders that are dated [year-month-day] with subject. Then, I back up the original photos and any edited photos onto CDs or DVDs. In addition, I have an external hard disk that backs up my files automatically, which I keep connected anytime I'm at my desk. I know that the media will change, but I haven't felt comfortable with iCloud or online alternative backups yet."

Steve Henry also takes lots of photos. Between those he takes for business at the Cone Group where he is the director of client services, his personal photos and those he takes as a volunteer photographer at events such as the Race for the Cure and Riverfest, he estimates he has more than 23,000 photos stored on his online Flickr account. He also stores some on the "cloud," remote networks of computers used for information storage, via his Dropbox account. He chose Flickr as his primary storage space because he can keep the photos in their original size and uncompressed format.

OUT OF THE SHOEBOX

Photographers have many options for storing photos through cloud services that offer a starter amount of free memory such as Dropbox (2 gigabytes free), Microsoft OneDrive (7 gigabytes free), Google Drive (15 gigabytes free) or Apple iCloud (5 gigabytes free). Additional memory is available by paying an annual fee.

Henry takes the majority of his personal photos with his phone using apps to create better images. He likes Big Lens because it creates an artificial depth-of-field that's missing on most phone photos. He also recommends Pro HDR. "It actually takes two shots and puts them together. It balances out the light and the dark, so you get a really crisp, balanced picture," he explains.

He also uses the GrooveBook app, which creates a flip book of 100 photos from his phone each month and mails it to him for $2.99 per month (including shipping).

GrooveBooks and other printed options might be the answer for people who lament the loss of paper photos.

"My kids are having this totally different picture experience than I did growing up," Montiel says. "I had photo albums when I was little. My kids don't have photo albums anymore. It's sad, and I worry about it. I think they are missing out on being able to go through pictures ... and walk down memory lane because it would involve me getting out the computer."

HomeStyle on 08/23/2014

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