The day after Thanksgiving, as the rain came down outside, I was curled up with my computer and scanner, digitizing hundreds of pictures. My 92-year-old mother-in-law is getting a digital picture frame for Christmas from her grandson, and I wanted to contribute images. I went through 25 years of photo albums to find pictures. Twenty-five years ago, I didn’t worry about how long my photos or my photo albums would last. I was young, felt invincible, and never really thought about growing older than, maybe, forty (that seemed REALLY OLD). So I was looking through pictures that have faded into soft magenta-hued memories, and sticky-page albums that tore every time I tried to lift the plastic covering to remove a picture.
I teach introductory digital imaging classes and the first thing I ask them is “Do you know where your pictures are?” “Can you find ones you took one, five or ten years ago?” “Where are they stored?” The answers are frightening. In this era of digital imaging we’re just beginning to think about preservation of our images – realizing that computer viruses, deteriorating CDs, failing hard drives, and rapidly changing technologies can wipe out your family’s history!
I want my students to think about organizing and storing their images. Often their memories are only in electronic form – they need to be organized and protected so they can find them again twenty-five years from now. If your pictures are printed, you need to think about the longevity of the paper and inks used, and if these prints made it all the way into a photo album, there are considerations about the types of plastics and chemicals that are used to produce the album pages.
Wilhelm Imaging Research has been the authority on paper longevity for as long as I can remember, conducting thorough test for the various factors that contribute to the deterioration of printed pictures. The Image Permanence Institute (based at Rochester Institute of Technology) also has articles on preserving your digital memory files and considerations about saving your digital prints .
All of this is to say, that the Sianna Images Album Wizard is a dream come true. There are no deteriorating plastic sheets releasing chemicals that will deteriorate my images. The pages are created with high quality paper and inks that are designed to last for generations to come. Pages are so simple to create, that it’s as easy as uploading the image to my PC, and hitting the PRINT button. It’s almost enough for me to go back through all my old albums and make them over….but that’s a job for a different rainy day….maybe twenty-five years from now.
