archive

This Glass Disc Can Store 360 TB of Your Photos for 13.8 Billion Years

If you back up your photos on optical disks or storage drives, there's a good chance your data won't last as long as you do due to things known as "disc rot" and "data rot". But what if you want to ensure that your precious photos live longer than you? Good news: a new "eternal" storage technology may be on the horizon.

Scientists have created nanostructured glass discs that can storage digital data for billions of years.

Corbis Images Sold by Bill Gates to Visual China Group

One of the largest photo collections in the world was just sold. Corbis, which is owned by Bill Gates, has sold off its images business to Visual China Group, China's equivalent of Getty Images. VCG is the same company that led a $13 million investment in 500px in 2015, and which is partnering with 500px to expand into China.

Every Moon Photo Shot by Apollo Astronauts is Now on Flickr

Want to browse the entire collection of photos captured on the moon by Apollo astronauts with their chest-mounted Hasselblad cameras? You can now do so right on Flickr.

The Project Apollo Archive has uploaded over 8,400 high-resolution scans of photos shot by Apollo astronauts during trips to the moon.

An Online Archive of Leica Photography Magazines Dating Back to 1949

Some photographers find that shooting with a Leica camera provides an experience unlike any other. If you happen to be one of those photographers, or possibly a curious individual, we have quite a bit of exciting news. Photography enthusiast Daniel Neal has uploaded a large collection of Leica Photography magazines to the web for public viewing.

Jules Decrauzat: The First Swiss Sports Photographer

1,250 glass negatives from between 1910 and 1925 were recently found in the archives of the Swiss photo agency Keystone. After some thorough research work, it was concluded that the photos formed an important chapter of Swiss photographic history: they were shot by photographer Jules Decrauzat, widely considered now to be the first sports photographer and first major photojournalist in the history of Switzerland.

Photo Scanning Businessman Being Sued for $90M After Making $120K Per Week

John Rogers was once one of the high flying entrepreneurs in the photo world. After coming up with the brilliant idea of scanning old photos for newspapers and splitting the rights to the digital images, Rogers was on his way to amassing one of the largest photo libraries in the world and was earning a whopping $120,000 per week selling his images on eBay.

Now his empire has come crashing down. Rogers is reportedly being sued for more than $90 million and has lost his business entirely.

Amazon Announces Unlimited Photo Storage for Just $12 a Year

Amazon has just dropped a huge bomb on the file storage industry by announcing two new unlimited cloud storage subscription plans. One lets you store all the files your heart desires for just $60 a year, and the second is one that may be a very attractive backup option for photographers: unlimited photo storage for just $12 a year.

PhotographyBB Magazine Reopens Its Archives, Lets You Download All 54 Editions for Free

Update: It looks like the original download links are now defunct. They appear to be redirecting visitors to a deal a day website. Apologies.

After officially ending its run last year, the PDF photography magazine PhotographyBB has reopened its archives by popular demand. Created and edited by Dave Seeram, PhotographyBB published over 50 editions over the course of its four-year existence, and now you can download every single one of them for free.

How to Download a Backup of All of Your Facebook Photos and Videos in a Few Easy Steps

Facebook may not be your main photo storage solution (at least we hope it's not), but knowing how to download a backup of all the photos and videos you've uploaded to and shared through the service is still a useful skill to keep tucked away in your Internet toolbox.

Fortunately, the social network actually has a very straightforward, secure and simple system in place so you can download a backup of all your photos, videos, messages and posts in just a few simple steps.

Vintage National Geographic Blog Revisits 100 Years of Nat Geo Archives

We all know what those stacks of iconic yellow-bordered magazines are when we see them lying around your local doctor or dentist's office. They’re National Geographic Magazines, and inside of these magazines are hundreds upon hundreds of wonderful photographs that may never be seen by the next generation.

It's a sad state of affairs, but one that Tumblr blog Vintage National Geographic is trying to remedy by sharing hundreds of scans of old Nat Geo photos you probably forgot existed.

One Man’s Quest to Save a Haunting 5,000-Portrait Archive from the Clutches of Time

For going on two decades after the end of World War I, Costica Ascinte was quite possibly the only professional photographer in all of Romania. He continued to work right up until his death in 1984, by which point he had accumulated over 5,000 glass plate negatives and several hundred prints -- a visual history of the Romanian people and a culture that, we know from previous articles, may soon be gone for good.

Unfortunately, this massive, culturally-rich archive is slowly disappearing as time and improper storage take their toll. But one man, Cezar Popescu, is determined to rescue whatever is still salvageable, and is well on his way to digitizing the entire archive even as it deteriorates before his very eyes.

My Photo Archiving Find Of A Lifetime

A big thank you to Mosaic for sending us this article! We hope you enjoy this amazing story!

One day in the spring of 1975, my phone rang, and that call led me on an incredible journey. The call was from my brother, who was starting his career as an art researcher and historian. He specializes on forgotten or overlooked American artists.

“Do you remember me telling you about the research I am doing on Alfred Waud, the Civil War artist”, he says, “well, I have tracked down his present day descendants living in Vermont. I visited them the other day and you won’t believe what I found. I need your expertise. We need to go back to Vermont right away. I’m not going say more. You’ll see for yourself.”

Lewis Hine’s Photography and The End of Child Labor in the United States

It's hard to imagine it, but in the early 1900s, child labor was still extremely common in the United States. All across the nation children would spend their days slaving away in mines and cotton mills, far away from the school rooms that the National Child Labor Committee wanted them to be in.

The NCLC had been trying to put a stop to child labor since it was founded in 1904, but statistics weren't having the effect they had hoped. So, in 1908, they decided to enlist the help of Lewis Hine and his camera to get their message out.

Archives of Influential Early Photographer Fox Talbot Get New Lease on Life

A British group working to preserve the work of influential 19th-century photographer William Henry Fox Talbot has discovered previously unseen work by the innovator.

A project led by Oxford University's Bodleian Libraries has been working to preserve the largest extant pivate collection of Talbot's work since family members revealed last year that they were working with a New York dealer who could sell key works to private collectors.

Browse 20,000+ Photos from 7 San Diego Museums on Balboa Park Commons

About a month ago, we shared the news that the George Eastman House had become the first photo museum to join the Google Art Project -- essentially making their archive of over 400,000 photos and negatives available for your browsing pleasure online.

Along those same lines, another collection of over 20,000 "rare and significant materials" is being brought to the World Wide Web. Launched earlier today, the Balboa Park Commons is an online archive that brings together over 20,000 digitized materials from seven different San Diego museums.

Browse Through a 160,000 Photo Archive of Finland During WWII

In the past, we've shared several online archives that give you access to a huge number of historical and historically significant photos online.

PhotosNormandie offered up 3,000+ CC photos from WWII, the NYC Department of Records compiled a database of over 870,000 photos of "the greatest city on earth," and now the Finnish Defense Forces have put up an online archive of their own, showcasing almost 160,000 wartime photos from Finland during WWII.

Creating Camelot: Restoring the Kennedy Archive of Photographer Jacques Lowe

The story of photographer Jacques Lowe and his iconic work chronicling the Kennedys and the era in US history known as Camelot is a tragic one. As President John F. Kennedy's official photographer for three years -- 2 before and 1 after he became president -- Lowe captured over 40,000 photos of the Kennedy family at work and play.

Because of the immense worth these photos held to Lowe and the general public, he took great care in choosing where he would store his negatives; he chose a fire-proof bank vault in the World Trade Center. On September 11th, 2001, his entire archive was lost.

Digital Public Library of America Offers a Wealth of Historical Photos

Yesterday at noon, after 20 months of planning and work, the Digital Public Library of America finally made its debut. An initiative of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, the DPLA aims to provide anyone with Internet, access to a massive online archive of content including ebooks, manuscripts, works of art and, of course, photographs.

PhotosNormandie: An Online Archive of 3,000+ CC Photos from WWII

One of the benefits of the digital age is widespread access to archives that might otherwise never be seen by more than a few people. A good example is The New York Department of Records' database of over 870,000 photos of NYC, and a new case in point is PhotosNormandie.

Beijing Silvermine: Rescuing Discarded Negatives from Illegal Recycling Centers

For his most recent project, French photography collector and editor Thomas Sauvin has been spending his time digging though illegal silver recycling centers in Beijing. He's doing this because buried within piles of X-Rays and CD-ROMs are hidden millions of discarded film negatives that Sauvin is intent on preserving.

Photog Accuses Le Monde of Trashing 27 Years of Work Without Notice

Argentinian photographer Daniel Mordzinski, know for his work photographing literary giants, is accusing famous French newspaper Le Monde of trashing 27 years of his work without warning. Boxes worth of negatives and slides were allegedly thrown away when the photographer's office at the newspaper was cleaned out without notice earlier this month.

Archive Containing 870,000 Rare Photos of NYC Now Open to the Public

Over the past 4 years the New York City Department of Records has been compiling an online database made up of rare photographs of "the greatest city on earth," and now that database is available to the public. The compilation consists of over 870,000 photos ranging in subject matter from landmarks to crime scenes put together from a Municipal Archives collection of over 2.2 million photos.

Albert Kahn’s Documentation of Humanity Through Early Color Photography

Albert Kahn was a wealthy French banker who launched a project in the early 1909 that aimed to create a photographic record of the world. The first commercially successful color photography process, Autochrome Lumière, had just arrived two years earlier, and Kahn decided to use the medium to both document human life and to promote peace. He sent out an army of photographers to 50 different countries, amassing 72,000 photos and 100 hours (183,000 meters) of film that became one of the most important collections of images in human history.