It’s March 2023, and it’s been about one year since I started digitising my photo collection.
Once I established a proper workflow, the task of scanning slides, negatives, and photo prints was a surprisingly quick (albeit tedious) process — and I will be writing a few words about that another time. What I hadn’t counted on was the amount of time that researching, naming, and sorting of the resultant scans would ultimately take. I will probably be writing a few words about these aspects, too (time permitting).
As a matter of fact, I’m still busy sorting through scanned photos now: it’s shocking to realise that I have more pictures of a puppy I sold last year than of my own mother’s entire lifetime!
While most snaps have now found a home in a rearranged folder scheme, there’s also a stack of vernacular garbage being deleted because it’s lost all meaning and relevance (which I have written about before).
On the other hand, there are some wonderful photographs among the family stash of slides and negatives which, although I have no personal relationship with the captured moments and they have no place in my (digital) photo album, are good enough to keep for their own sake.
Then there are others such as those my father took in the early seventies during the construction of the Cabora Bassa hydroelectric power scheme that may hold some historical or geopolitical interest to random strangers.
These will likely end up on Wikimedia Commons whereas other photos of public interest may find refuge at Google Places. Flickr, too, seems worth returning to, and there’s an assemblage of new material for the Human Clock.
This stuff can keep a man way too occupied. That’s all for now.
Photos via Herbert Hönigsperger Snr.
