A trip back into time
Bookworm on Jan 03 2010 at 10:08 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
For the first many years of our children’s lives, we had a film, not a digital, camera. My husband decided yesterday that we needed to scan all of those pictures onto my computer. We’ve been scanning for tens of hours now, with tomorrow lining up as another scanning day. He’s also been doing something very smart — he’s been uploading them to google photos. You can upload a lot of photos for free, and then thousands more for a small annual fee.
As you all know, I’m a word person, so you won’t be surprised that I’m not very visually oriented. In seldom take or look at family pictures. For my husband, though, pictures are everything. He’s feeling wonderful to have them all easily accesible on the computer and safely backed up off site.
By the way, if you haven’t tried it, check out google’s Picasa, which makes uploading, organizing and backing up photos incredibly easy.
As for me, I missy computer. I’m iPhone blogging again and can’t get to the news. Life goes back to normal on Tuesday, however, so I just have to hang in there a little longer.
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6 Responses to “A trip back into time”
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We got tired of having pictures scattered about the various computers in the house, so I bought my wife a portable hard drive for Christmas. 500 GB of storage, plugs into any computer– she can take the photos wherever she goes and it freed up space on the other computers.
So far we’ve used 40 GB of space, so she should be able to take pictures to her hearts delight for the next 46 years.
Not to diminish the printed word, but when you look at a picture you are not relying on a verbal representation, but seeing an actual slice of what was in front of the lens when the shutter was tripped.
When you looked at your old pictures you were probably amazed at the things that changed. On those occasions when your husband carried his camera away from the birthday parties and the vacations and out into the everyday world his photos caught part of the streets, the houses, the people, the stores and places of business or worship. And you saw “That’s how it was then”.
Example: Over Christmas my father-in-law showed me an aerial photograph of our mid-western industrial hometown, taken in 1953. The amazing thing about the picture is that even from 1,000 feet in the air the thriving prosperity of the city radiated right onto the film. I could see the prosperity, cleanliness, and orderliness that are all gone now, as if it never existed.
Further, among my own pictures I have photos taken inside public buildings in Washington DC, buildings that now limit walk-in access and discourage photography; photos of airport boarding areas showing people just handing over their tickets and walking on board; photos of local automobile dealerships that are now empty parking lots; photos inside retail businesses during Christmastimes-past, business that this season I noticed looked a little threadbare.
Those of your readers who have cameras, especially film cameras, might want to throw down a photographic marker; take some pictures of the every-day and then look at those pictures in ten years.
Does Google Images back up their own files? You want two copies of your photos, in case the first copies get lost due to a hard drive crash.
Or does Google Images intend to keep only one copy, with that one copy being “THE backup”, and you are expected to also keep a copy of each photo on your home computers?
It would be a shame to upload the images to google images, only to lose them all in a crash. And once that happens, they can’t be recovered (except from the “second copy”, wherever IT is.
Either way, just in case, don’t throw away the originals!
I am impressed with Mr. Book’s valiant effort. One day when the kids won’t give you 5 minutes of rest and you are not the center of their universe, you will find great pleasure to click and pick at the past.
correction: One day when the kids will give you 5 minutes ….
Get yourself an external hard drive to back up everything. Here’s a link. Stay away form those applications such as have been mentioned and all the other’s that say the same thing about free back-ups.
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5260910&CatId=136
Or just go to http://www.tigerdirect.com/ and search for an external back-up drive.