Wayne, I must say I have a different perspective on what we may call the philosophy of longevity.
I’m not sure we are that different. As I stated, I believe many of the images I created of individuals and families in my first 30 years as a photographer will be treasured for decades. In fact I’m old enough now that I have already experienced this on many occasions where someone tells me about treasuring a picture I had taken of their parents or parents family when their parents were small children, or even babies.
Were I a portrait photographer today, I would have a category of higher priced prints that emphasize the longevity of the product, produced on proven paper and probably with an HP printer. While most might not survive, those that do may be very important. I do some genealogy as a hobby and stumbling on a photograph of one of my ancestors from many years ago is always a treat. As I mentioned, I have many people photographers as customers, and because of the price point of C-prints, this still completely dominates this part of the industry in output. My Chromira printer cranks out thousands of prints for portrait and wedding photographers every day, the one area where many of the images produced should be valued for longevity. unfortunately the public in general is partly to blame because their seems to be a universal acceptance of the longevity of digital images, and most assume that if the photographer gives them a DVD or if the images are uploaded to some website, it will serve as a long term repository to preserve the images for future generations.
However, this website seems to be focused more on commercial photographers and landscape/fine art photographers. I’m sure some people photographers lurk here, but I have no illusions of grandeur and feel my “fine art” work isn’t collectible (and my sales staff is forbidden to even infer or discuss this as they sell an image). In fact there are photographers who’s work I think little of that may be approaching being “collectible”, but most of those aren’t about the skill of photography and the images but because they are famous from some non related avenue, such as actor. There are also some notable photographers who have placed themselves in this collectible category, but do so as part of their marketing hype and despite their claims, there work isn’t valued as collectible art based on the resell market and to be honest, I’m doubtful they will actually attain that status they believe they have. It would be interesting to see if 100 years from now anyone actually recognizes the name Peter Lik and if a large amount of his work actually survives, although I believe Ansel Adams has a pretty good chance of being remembered.
Mike Johnston at the Online Photographer wrote an
article 8 ways to preserve your pictures and he presents his case quite well. His first step was to become famous.
I’m not saying we should just blow it off, it is important. but each photographer should evaluate their own priorities and make the decision with some attempt at realism. I stuck with Epson for various reasons and despite the longevity tests felt epson still delivered adequate stability for my work. I like the fact the new Epson inks are better but it wasn’t a factor at all in upgrading, I was more interested in what they did with the black inks. I guess those using Canon now have to ask themselves this same question and resolve their position. I think for most, switching doesn’t make sense, just like I always felt the argument to switch from Epson to Canon because of the tests wasn’t really a major factor in the comparison.