Remembering Fred

A photography friend of mine, Fred Carey, recently passed away due to cancer. I meet Fred several years ago and with his encouragement started a photography club in Shelby. Fred was always traveling the country by car and on cruises. He had won numerous awards for his photography over the years and won in a National Park contest a few years ago. I took a portrait of him for the newspaper that his family adored. I got a phone call from the newspaper asking if the family could use the image and I was afraid I knew why.
I visited his widow last week and asked to purchase one of his pictures. My wife was with me and she got a feeling that one day she might be in this woman's shoes. Fred had printing 100s of his pictures and his wife is selling them. I purchased one of my favorites. A photo of Mabry Mill of the Blue Ridge Parkway that won the contest.
I tend to think that I will live forever and I will always have time to print my pictures so my family will find them. In truth, most of them are digital files on two external hard drives and on hundreds of cds and dvds. Most of them are in a RAW format. I don't know if my family would ever be able to find them all or know how to view them. This doesn't include the 1000s of negatives I have in binders. At least someone would know what these are.
I do make an attempt to print my favorites but I can't keep up with all the digital files that I take. Maybe I will be able to come up with a solution.