We are heading to Alaska in about a week to visit our daughter and enjoy some vacation time. We have enjoyed Alaska throughout our adult lives and this will be our 4th trip. Kim ended up working there for a summer partly as a consequence of our previous experiences as a family.
I started to look around our house last night to see if I could round up video from our previous Alaskan adventures. The last trip I know we took mostly digital pictures. The first trip was so long ago the Alcan highway was a gravel road for long stretches and I was using the type of VHS camcorder you held on your shoulder. I was searching for tapes from the second trip. I can see in my mind two Hi-8 digital tapes with a label – Alaska. I found probably 50-60 tapes – most without a label. Cindy was busy and one of the issues we argue about is whether I am capable of locating lost objects. I did not ask for help and gave up.
I have enjoyed still and video photography all of my life. Somewhere I have resources that are likely valuable to my family and possibly to others. I have no idea how to combine the material that is saved on multiple computers, discs, tapes of many different formats. As the expression goes, after a while one mountain looks pretty much like another. How do I catalog the material at this date?
I really don’t know, but these are issues I need to think about. I always thought I would eventually transfer all of the material I have to a consistent format (I have 30 reel to reel tapes of music from the 60-70s under my desk and no reel to reel player which both channels working). I was going to start last night.
So, I am beginning to think seriously about this issue and I encourage you to do the same. I like iPhoto – I wish I had a GPS on my camera so the location of my photos would be recorded. I am trying to be more consistent in adding annotations. I upload some photos to Flickr and have am spending $25 a year for the pro version. I have not thought a lot about video until now. I think I need something more than Flickr and Youtube.
I did find some vacation video from 1998 and created a CD. For fun, I cut the CD material down to 10 minutes of snippets and uploaded to Youtube (see below). I have viewed things in the past I think will now be very difficult to see again. I get that is what some folks call history. AND I WAS THERE.
[Youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3B_8ad0xCA]
