The quality of modern digital photography is amazing. One
has only to turn to Flickr wildlife pools to see a fantastic array of shots.
Obviously a good many are of regularly photographed subjects but amongst them
there are absolute gems. In the case of hoverflies, I have spent the last 6
years investigating photographic records and have built up a substantial
database of URLS that effectively form records. Some of these shots will be
available for the foreseeable future but if they reside on Flickr Pro their
future is less certain because they will not be hosted when the photographer
stops paying for the web hosting facility.
This raises the tricky question of what happens to photos
after one's inevitable demise? A collection of insects can be donated to a
museum (well, maybe a few can), but what about one's photographic archive? In
the case of insect photos, we might well want such an archive and retrieval
service. Steve Falk's Flickr pages are an invaluable identification aid and his
photos have been immensely important in the Hoverfly WILDGuide. So too has the work of several other excellent
photographers. I would be very sad if these fantastic resources were not 'saved for the nation'. After all, in many cases they are not only fantastic wildlife shots but also works of art.
It seems to me that there is a need to tackle the question
of a national photo archive - is it not time that one was created? Preserving photos for
posterity also provides a way of storing photographic vouchers and also
establishes a huge educational resource. It seems to me that there is a need
for the biological recording community to look at this issue and to consider
the establishment of such an archive. It is a pretty novel scenario, so I
imagine it could be put together as an HLF bid as a follow-up to other 'citizen
science' initiatives.
I suspect that archive facilities would attract huge support
from photographers. In many cases there will be photos that might be identified
in the future, so this could be a form of record storage in the same way that
museums store large volumes of unidentified material that may at some stage
help to answer a critical question. Who should be encouraged to pick up the
baton and provide a lead?
I recall that the British Library is archiving selected websites. I doubt they archive Flickr though, but perhaps they could be encouraged to archive selected accounts. Maybe NHM could discuss this with the BL?
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