Those sound like very involved projects: a lot of work but well worth the while! Properly processed photographs
can last well over a hundred years when handled with care and not overly exposed to contaminants or sunlight etc.
I should digitize some of the family negs and photos my mother gave me many years ago. I did print
many of them and sent copies to my siblings, but unfortunately that was just before digital came in.
How far back into your family history does your tree go? Did you do all the research yourself?
My twin brother has been digging into our family tree for quite a while and gone back hundreds
of years further once he accessed the LDS data base. They allow people to store unfinished
work there too, so there is all the official family lines and then a lot of unfinished lineages.
We have learned a lot of interesting stories about our family this way.
It is very involved and time consuming, but i take it slowly and do it during times which i spend more times indoors, like in winter mostly. But, i do have time to write about the family tree when it's a nice sunny day like this summer and i stay outside in patio when i'm not doing anything. So it's about chipping away, enjoying yourself and creating something nice for the next generation in the family.
The VHS project took me more than a year. The family pictures scanned so far (about 10,000 of them) have taken almost 2 years of covid time since it started and i'm still not done. I think i have about 3000 more at least.
As far as the family tree goes, I can trace my family tree with documents at around year 1400 , but before that, historically the region is as old as ancient Greece (i'm from Albania) so historical documents show the people from my region to be as old as ancient Greece basically. They have archeological findings for these claims but like i said, with my documents, i can trace my family tree up to and around 1400 because prior to that, i don't have any documents linking me to my ancestors.
The main research of my family tree was done by my grandfather, who back in his day was a high ranking official in the government/military so he had access to a lot of documents and archives which he passed down to us.
Some of the photographs of my great great grandfather are basically close to a century old. They were printed around 1920s i think according to the handwritten notes on the back of the picture.
Being a Geek myself, i envision some day we will be able to look back in time at Jesus Himself. It's all theoretical but i like thinking about it. I also think that maybe God Himself won't allow it or there is some rule in the universe which blocks us from doing that but the thought process is like this:
1. The universe is a time machine. When we look at the sun, we're looking at it as it was 8 minutes ago. So when we look at a star we look at it as it was 1000 light years ago.
2. So if we invent some means to travel faster than light, we would go about 2000 light years away from earth.
3. From there we would point a telescope with the type of camera which has the ability to see fine detail on the planet and then we would be able to see Jesus Himself.
I think God, has some rule to block this from happening but it's a nice thought since it's theoretically possible.