It's been about two months since I've written a blog entry.  To do a blog right, you need to update quickly and routinely to keep people reading.  I haven't been doing it right.  So, an explanation beyond "It's planting season in the garden."

A month or so before my last blog entry Zenfolio, the group that hosts my website, changed its terms of service.  I checked their contract and it says that they can do this and there's nothing you can do about it.  So there!

The change is that if I do not modify a gallery and no one has viewed it recently, they "archive" it.  This means that if you want to see an archived gallery, you submit a request and they will unarchive it for your viewing.  They claim that they will have a 48-hour turn around time, but it's been two weeks since the last time I've tried to unarchive a gallery.  How would you know that you wanted to see an archived gallery unless you saw it?

This archival storage goes against what I was trying to do with my website.  My goal was to upload all my photographs with a searchable database and let it sit for people to enjoy or ignore as they choose.  Nearly all of my photographs before 2008 are on analog negatives.  I'm maybe a third of the way through scanning the black and white negatives, most of my photographs before 1988 when I went to law school and lost access to a darkroom and time.  I have yet to begin scanning the color negatives shot from 1988 to 2008.

When I asked if I could opt out of the archival storage I was told no.  When I asked why they were doing this, customer service told me that they were getting governmental mandates to limit storage of photo files because there had been a geometric increase in such storage and that had an environmental impact.  I asked to be directed to those specific governmental mandates and never got that answer.  I believe it to be a smoke screen, a way to cover their butts because it costs less for them to put image files away where they need not be promptly recoverable.  I believe that I was subject to a bait and switch sale.  After investing a lot of time and money into creating this website I now to have to abandon it if I don't want the new terms.  I face the sunk cost problem.

The real problem of computers and their environmental impact is bitcoin mining.  I'm untroubled by the slight impact to the environment of my photo data storage.  I grow most of my own food, reducing my carbon footprint more than the environmental cost of my website.  Zenfolio is lying to me after taking my money.

So I've been looking for an alternative.  I think that I will be hosting my own website, using a Wordpress structure, with a purchased plug-in for photo galleries that would support an SQL search function.  Ideally I would learn CSS and SQL to craft my own website independent of any other's structure, making me independent of their subsequent changes in terms of service.  But instead my time is best put to scanning and uploading photographs before I die.

I'm 67 now.  I went through liquidating my parents' estate.  I know that if I don't scan my negatives and make a searchable database - my life's photographic work will become useless junk.  My daughter, though personally supportive, is totally disinterested in my photography.  So this is my major goal for the rest of my life, however long that will be.

When I was 19 I learned that Ansell Adams basically stopped shooting photographs in his 30s and spent the rest of his life curating and printing and selling his existing negatives.  I was appalled that he stopped shooting.  I now have a better appreciation for how much work it takes to curate and scan my photographs.  I do this not to sell them.  Few are interested in buying.  Few will be until after I'm dead.  I do believe that I am among the best photographers.  My images have an unusual combination of moment and geometry.  I'd like to think that my photographs combine the best of the styles of Henri Cartier-Bresson and Paul Cézanne.  I know that everything will change, everything will die, but I'd like to give my photographs the best long life that they can have - just as I have tried for my daughter Amelia.