On Scanning Old Photos — In Metadata We Believe

by Rian

I’m still in the process of getting my photos scanned from a lab. It’s a long story; but to put it simply, it appears the lab was geared toward analog hobbyists, not mass album scanning. It would take few more weeks to get it all scanned. As for the restorative works, I don’t plan to do them right away. Few forums and reviews I’ve read on restorations called it more an artwork — each restorer would have his/her technique with different style. But filling in metadata sounded doable. Until I realized how reliant we became on even on the simplest metadata.

For all intents and purposes, we have become reliant on date and time —not the figurative idea of days and times, but having date and time stamped on files. One of the most immediate problems was that a lot of the photos were simply not dated: only the years and why (e.g. holiday, event, family gathering). That boils it down to what year, and possibly what month, if not season. If it so happens that the event lasted over few days, I have no way of knowing which one comes first, let alone which activity happened first on the same day. Even the photos with the date stamps weren’t exactly helpful. Because there is no guarantee the date on the camera was accurate, not to mention there are always rollovers from previous rolls.

GPS or location data is the recently added feature I took for granted as well. Photos taken with smartphones have location data embedded in it, and most apps that have library feature have some way of sorting the photos based on locations. For older photos, basically most of the locations were either unidentifiable or simply gone. Aside from photos taken at usual places, such as home, photos rarely had any identifiable signs or logos. No one is interested in leaving “where” the photo was taken, unless it happens to be a scenic vista. If it’s taken during a trip abroad, that’s another problem on its own; I could only recognize in which country it was taken, not much else.

There are other minor details I wish I could find, but there was one thing I had to come terms with. We take a lot more photos on smartphones than we ever did with film cameras. One of the pattern I noticed is that with film cameras, an event is usually captured within the limit of 24 or 36 shots — the size of traditional roll. Whereas on smartphones, especially the current generation of smartphones, the only limit would be how many times would you, as the photographer, are willing to push the button or your friends and families, who are posing for it, are willing to try it again. Although it is controversial, but I believe it is only fair to admit it. Smartphone photography isn’t going anywhere.