[pure-silver] Re: keeping negatives dry and safe on the gulf coast

Well a couple of thoughts here Shannon.  You are smart to think ahead.  When the stress of a storm is approaching, good ideas are often missed because you didn't think of them when everything else has to be done and it just not occur to you till its too late to do anything about it.

First is when you leave your house do you have a plan to evacuate the most critical stuff or do you take that with you??  Maybe there is a friend that could come get them and take them with them till the weather has improved or you have returned.

The biggest issue might be condensation.  Too water tight and you might have condensation issues to complicate the water issues.  There are tons of plastic bins that might provide some protect for a while, but if it had to set a few days after the storm without power for ac and the humidity that would be there, it could be a big problem.

Next thing I would do is to scan it all and store it on several dvds or CDs ect.  Might even consider one of the online back ups too.  Why??   Well even if you lost the negative at that point you could have the film written by a film recorder to create another negative.  Not ideal and time consuming, but better than a total loss.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [pure-silver] keeping negatives dry and safe on the gulf coast
From: Shannon Stoney <shannonstoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, March 18, 2009 10:09 am
To: pure-silver@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Hi, every summer I leave my darkroom in Houston and go to TN to be a
farmer again. Every summer for the past ten years I have parked my
negatives in my partner's office, at the University of Houston. It
seemed like a safe place, as it was a relatively new building, with
sprinklers for fire, etc. At least, it seemed safer than our old
house. But that proved not to be the case: last summer, Hurricane Ike
blew the roof of his office building, and his office got really wet.
Luckily my negatives were in a file cabinet that didn't get wet, but it
was close.

So, I'm trying to figure out how to keep them dry in the event of a
hurricane this summer. We have a better house now, but it could still
get a tree blown down on its roof. His office building is fixed
supposedly, but you never know. I have been thinking that I would like
to find a storage place, maybe like a rented storage, for my negatives
over the summer. What kind of place should I look for? I have a lot of
negatives, some in plastic binder boxes, and some 4x5 negatives in
paper sleeves in cardboard boxes.

I have a fireproof waterproof safe in TN where I keep a few of my most
precious negatives, but it doesn't hold very many, and bigger versions
of this safe seem pretty expensive. Do other folks on this list worry
about flooding and fire? how do you protect your negatives when you're
gone, etc?

--shannon


http://shannonstoney-twors.blogspot.com/
http://branguslane.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shannonstoney/

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