This Saturday my sister graduate from high school, thanks to this it allow me to come home and be back with my family since I went back from the US back in December. Now I will be one week around and be able to work from home.The graduation ceremony was interesting, I got to meet back with some friends and also catch on on what ever happened withmy high school friends too. Amazingly a lot of them are living in the city. I was my family official photographer having to shoot lots of pictures during that night, and have a good time with my family, I even dance some salsa with my mom — I don’t like salsa.However as I was taking pictures to my sister I came to one realization, I start thinking of my won graduation pictures. I had my pictures taken almost 10 years ago and I see them now and they look exactly like my sister picture. What do I mean by that, that when I took my pictures I instantly digitize them and now I can see them the same way they were many years ago.
And now my sister one….
Given that the quality of my sister picture is better. It was shot with a more recent camera and it was also shoot natively digital, while the other ones were scanned. However is interesting that the quality once digitized the quality has not change at all. The interesting here is the way this data will preserve for many years to come. Now we are looking to a huge level of image technology because we are using open standards like PNG, while most of the native format is JPEG, it is open enough to be displayed all over and exchange format seamlessly. However the print pictures from my family books have degraded to such a point that is not possible get back or even think on preserving this instance without a major effort.While I was taking the pictures, my dad was taking us a video, the video was NOT a digital video and it was done on a Hi8 cassette. This format is not open, and is not digital, this means that some of the videos shot by this camera can’t be moved around. They can’t be tranfered to other mediums like a computer, cellphone, pda and most important is a dying technology. This means that most of this memories will not be preserved and some of my childhood parties and videos will be gone forever.Interesting topic and even if there is nothing new, is interesting how people are simply not conscious enough to think about this. I hope on the long run we can move forward to digitize all our life medium. Have you digitize all your family legacy yet?
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