A further reflection on the 10,000 photos that I can access any time

In an earlier piece (“10,000 Photos: An Introduction) I began reflecting on the 10,000 photos that I can access any time. They are either personal to me or were sent my way, as prints or digitally.

I could have let that earlier piece grow to a thousand words or more but decided to break it down into smaller chunks. The following 700 words are about the thousands of prints that I can literally put my fingers on within a minute or two. They are stored, as I wrote earlier:

… in various ways: photo albums, shoeboxes, larger cardboard boxes, plastic storage crates. For at least a thousand of these photos I have multiple printed copies, for reasons I will explain another time.

Now is the time. Let me explain why I have multiple prints of at least a thousand different photos. This will take you back to the “pre-digital” era of photography, and specifically to the years 1986 to 2004.

My brother’s daughter was born in 1986. From that point onwards I took far more photos than ever before. I bought my first 35mm camera and would use a roll or two of film (usually 24 images in each) whenever I went away and even more at other times: birthdays, Christmas, Easter. My sister’s daughter was born in 1988 and my nephew in 1991. I have a godson who was born in 1989. Images from their early years were captured on dozens (maybe hundreds) of rolls of film.

In case you weren’t there, here’s an explanation about how photographs were created in the 1980s. This might be totally new information to anyone under 30. It will be like finding out how we used to make arrangements in the days before mobile phones, or how we survived with only four TV channels which we could not record, pause or rewind.

Most photographs were taken on cameras that contained rolls of film. 35mm film was affordable and good quality. The roll of film was removed from the camera and developed at a processing lab. In the mid-1980s it would cost around £5 to process a film containing 24 images at a High Street lab. The cost would vary according to how soon you wanted your prints. Typical options would be 1-hour, 24-hour and 3-day processing times, each one costing slightly less. It was even cheaper to send your film and receive your prints by post, but there was the slight risk that items might get lost in the mail.

Either way, whether you used a High Street lab or trusted the postal service, you would receive a set of prints and a set of negatives. The latter could be used to order reprints more reliably than trying to take a reprint from an original photo. It was cheaper too. Typically a reprint from a negative would cost 30p but a reprint from an original would be 50p.

The cost of developing rolls of film and ordering reprints is part of the reason why I still have thousands of duplicate prints from 1986 onwards. Well, it explains why I acquired so many duplicates, but not why I still have them over 35 years later.

I learnt, in 1986, that if you ordered a duplicate set of prints when the original film was developed it would cost much less than ordering photos later. Typically it was an extra £2 for a duplicate set. Sometimes there were greater economies of scale. It might be £2 for a second set, and £1.50 for a third. Usually I would get three or even four sets of prints from any film that featured my nieces, nephew or my godson and his family.

I developed a method. I would keep the “negative set” (one set of photos and the negatives) separate from all the others and give away most of the duplicates. This method worked up to a point. I gave away (to family members, friends, and my godson’s family) thousands of prints. But I have still ended up with thousands of duplicates. There are complete sets of prints intended for other people that I never passed on to them. Some of these people are no longer with us.

The “negative sets” are still kept separate from the duplicates. Yes, I could just dump the boxes of duplicates, safe in the knowledge that there is at least one copy of every photo somewhere. Maybe I should. But it still doesn’t feel right to trash thousands of photos of people who have been such an important part of my life.

To be continued

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