My father-in-law was a professional film editor. As you can imagine, his photos are excellent. He taught classes for many years, won contests, and gave travel talks at the libraries in the area.

My husband (also a semi-professional photographer) took all his film, slides and scans when he died, with the intent to sort it and find a home for things. Unfortunately, my husband passed away only a few years after his dad. I am left with an entire bedroom full of prints, slides, negatives and digitized media.

I’d like to do the right thing with it. My lovely FIL traveled the globe and shot images everywhere. However, I know that his pictures of Cambodia are probably like anyone else’s pictures.

Should I throw it all away? Are there stock photo houses that would like it? I’m not looking to make money (although I wouldn’t turn it down if offered). I’d just like to see his life’s work go somewhere. There is only one brother and he has no interest in any of it.

Advice?

  • SilenceSeven@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    This might end up being one of those /r/UnethicalLifeProTips :-|

    If you have a bunch that are already scanned.

    Sign up for a flickr account. Depending on the number of photos, in order to upload all of them you might have to buy a “PRO” account for the year. (Currently $72) Don’t set the account to auto-renew unless you think this will take longer than a year. There’s also a 2-year plan for $132.

    Upload all of the photos, and add as many descriptions, titles as you want. I would do this in groups. Cambodia (1972), Tiajuana (1964), etc… Reason is you can add titles and descriptions to all of the items in that group as they’re uploading. You can upload more than one group of photos at a time, but sometimes just looking at the small thumbnails you might tag some wrong.

    Also mark all of them as “Public Domain Dedication (CC0)” You can do this during the upload process. This makes them free for anyone to download and use, if that’s your intent. There are other options. https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

    Anyway, once everything is uploaded and you’re happy with everything. You can set the account to “In Memoriam” This will protect all of the photos from deletion even after the Pro account expires. https://www.flickrhelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/4404071450516-In-Memoriam-Flickr-Accounts

    Once the account is In-Memoriam you won’t be able to upload anything else or log in, so make sure you’re done with everything.