My photographic legacy

In connection with the refurbishing of this site, which took place in April 2025, I had to dig out some original photos used on the site to redo them and mostly find larger or better copies.

That sent me down the rabbit hole that’s my photo archive.

My archive is actually quite extensive. Some 290,000 images in the main catalog and just shy of 70,000 in the “day-to-day” one. Then I have a bunch of slides stored in boxes – probably about 10,000 and a few boxes and folders of prints.

Who's gonna care about dozens of fly reel images?

As you can gather from this, there’s quite a load of images. Many are parts of series or simply various versions of the same image. I have a tendency to keep everything that I shoot, including failed or shitty images, but still quite a few of my photos are both interesting and unique. 
Pictures from events, pictures of people I know, from trips and travels, of our kids and much, much more. Some show situations and things that only exist in those single copies and nowhere else.
They aren’t worth anything as such, but may have some sentimental value to my friends and family. And they sure do have some value to me!

That trip made me think. What happens to all these images when I’m not here anymore?

Pictures of me in the late 90's

Currently they exist as fairly well organized Lightroom catalogs and as backups in a few locations, and there’s a relatively good level of control over them. I can mostly find what I need fairly quickly, and leafing through a folder to find something useful or interesting is not difficult ... to me.
But what about my kids or someone else who gets the task of going through my stuff when I can’t do it anymore? How will they react or treat my photographic legacy?
I have a hard time imagining that anyone will maintain the full catalog anywhere or keep my work computer or NAS running to keep these pictures available. Somebody might go through some of the images and save a few. Maybe print some or share some, but in the long haul I’m almost sure that all my pictures will disappear and be gone forever.

I have thousands of pictures of beaches and fishing

This is in general the fate of many pictures. The digital images that members of my family have shot are not very well preserved. I have a copy of a few images from my late father-in-law as well as a copy of some of my mothers digital pictures. She’s still alive and still producing images, now using a phone as everybody else.
I have some of my wife’s shots too, but altogether a far majority of what my family has shot is already gone – or at least saved in places where the files will vanish at a certain point when no one tends to them anymore.
I also have a bunch of prints and even some slides, but again it’s just a fraction of what has been produced during all the years where taking pictures has been common.
I have scanned quite a few of these prints, but again: they are now part of my legacy and will be gone when that for one reason or the other goes.

Quite a few of these images appear online in various places. Like on this very site or on other sites that I have made, but web sites to not live forever – in particular then the originator and caretaker is gone and doesn’t keep them running anymore. At one point some hosting company will delete the sites, and these images will be gone too.

An old B/W print which has been scanned

So – like it’s the case with gazillions of other digital images – my production of images will disintegrate and be gone forever. I have no grand delusions about the value of my shots.
Economically they have no value. 
Culturally there may be some in there, which can have some interest because they show something historical, something that’s gone now or some event that I documented, which can be interesting or useful in some cases.
Sentimentally they may be interesting to my friends and family. A lot of the images do after all show the history of my kin.

But essentially the images are worthless to most other people, and essentially only has value to me.

I will make sure that access to these pictures will be there when I’m gone, but I’m honestly not expecting anyone to maintain them or keep them available in the future.