What do you do with all of those photos?

I'm just a hobbyist photographer, but I've taken many, many thousands of photos over the past decades. When you take enough photos, you usually end up with a few that you feel are pretty good. I've never had an interest in trying to sell any of them, and I'm too busy with my regular work to try. I wonder sometimes what will happen to all of these photos. What are your plans for your archives? It seems that it would be a shame to just throw them all out someday. It would be nice to think that they could go somewhere that they would be used and appreciated.

How about:

- donate them to the local Audubon chapter

- donate them to the local school system

Good photos, and even marginal shots of common local stuff, can be used for lots of educational purposes. Our local Audubon chapter does a lot of work with area elementary schools, and keeps a collection of slides of Arizona birds for those programs. I don't know what they do now that nobody shoots slides any more.

For this to really work you need someone to be the custodian in charge of the photo collection at the chapter, so why not try to get that function going if it doesn't already exist in San Diego.

The more they are labeled and organized, the more likely they'll be useful to someone else.

We've been asked to go through estate photo collections a few times, and the project is just about insurmountable without good organization. And the more photos, the worse it gets. We finally had to start charging for the service (by the hour), and suddenly the requests dried up. Fine by me!

Another issue is the historic value of photos. We do lots of restoration work, and it's simply amazing to me how useful and interesting photos with provenance can be. We all "take photos for posterity," but few of us prepare them in any way that will be useful for posterity.

Thanks guys, Both good suggestions. I do have my photos well organized, and our San Diego Natural History Museum has an extensive avian research department and sample collection (including many of Audubon's original notes and samples). Maybe they'd like to start a photo bank of local species. I'll let you know what I find out.

Check out www.lulu.com. You can organize your photos into themes for photo books. You can even include your friend's poetry if you're lucky enough to have a poet friend. Don't worry about sales; you're unlikely to make many except to family and friends! They make great gifts and can even be used as budget portfolios. If you have anyone in mind to actually take your photos off your hands, this could be a good way to show what you have.

This might not be what you had in mind, but having my photos in books makes me feel that posterity has a better chance of seeing them than if I think only of fate of the actual slides, negs, prints, and electronic files in my possession.

Mine are well-organized and willed to my children. I hope they have better luck marketing them than I have had.

You know, I notice that on Fleabay and some other auction sites there is a big market for old photos. Even your run of the mill photos that portray any aspect of how life was back in the '30's,'40's or '50's are bringing some good money.... I wonder if the digital age will change all that? Maybe these digital shots will have some value someday. Good idea keeping them in the family, Tom.

No one in my family cares about photography or even knows how to use a computer to edit the images. I make master images and small master images of the ones I think are good. The rest get tossed out at the end of the year to make way for the new ones!!!