Blu-ray is a good way to store data for archival purposes. macOS has built-in support for writing blu-ray disks. However there is an issue with file creation date. All files' Created date gets reset to 1 January 1970 at 5:30 AM. This the unix epoch time. Clearly this makes lot of things difficult. This issue is present for years and still not fixed with macOS Ventura. I checked the date at a later point in time and by then I have most of my image files written into blu-ray. This makes ordering files by created date difficult. If photos have Content Created attribute we can use this to fix. This value is intact and so is Modified. I created a bash script to update the Created date to Content Created date if it is valid or use Modified.

#!/bin/bash

resetted_date="1970-01-01 00:00:00 +0000"
resetted_content_created_date="1970-01-01 00:00:00 +0000"

function update_created_date {
  local file="$1"

  fs_created_date_utc=$(mdls "$file" | grep "kMDItemFSCreationDate" | awk -F '= ' '{print $2}')
  fs_created_date_local=$(date -j -f "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z" "$fs_created_date_utc" "+%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S %z")
  
  # Get the kMDItemContentCreationDate value
  content_created_date_utc=$(mdls "$file" | grep "kMDItemContentCreationDate[^_]" | awk -F '= ' '{print $2}')
  content_created_date_local=$(date -j -f "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z" "$content_created_date_utc" "+%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S %z")
  
  fs_modified_date_utc=$(mdls "$file" | grep "kMDItemFSContentChangeDate" | awk -F '= ' '{print $2}')
  fs_modified_date_local=$(date -j -f "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %z" "$fs_modified_date_utc" "+%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S %z")

  # Check if creation date is not empty and fs created date got reset to 1970
  if [ "$fs_created_date_utc" == "$resetted_date" ] && [ -n "$content_created_date_utc" ] && [ "$content_created_date_utc" != "$resetted_content_created_date" ]; then
    SetFile -d "$content_created_date_local" "$file"
    echo "Content created date set $content_created_date_local for $file"
  elif [ "$fs_created_date_utc" == "$resetted_date" ]; then
    SetFile -d "$fs_modified_date_local" "$file"
    echo "Modified date set $fs_modified_date_local for $file"
  fi
}

# Check for folder path arg
if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
  echo "Usage: $0 "
  exit 1
fi

folder_path="$1"

# Check if the folder exists
if [ ! -d "$folder_path" ]; then
  echo "Folder '$folder_path' not found."
  exit 1
fi

# Recursively process files in folder
while IFS= read -r -d '' file; do
  if [ -f "$file" ] || [ -d "$file" ]; then
    if [ "$(basename "$file")" != ".DS_Store" ]; then  # ignore .DS_Store
      update_created_date "$file"
    fi
  fi
done < <(find "$folder_path" -type f -print0)

# Recursively update created for the directory as well
while IFS= read -r -d '' dir; do
  if [ -d "$dir" ]; then
    update_created_date "$dir"
  fi
done < <(find "$folder_path" -type d -print0)

Run this script by specifying the folder like set-created-date-to-image-date Pictures-2018. It will recursively set the created date for folders and files.

The above script will fix the date problem. To prevent this issue with blu-ray disk image writing, one solution is to create a dmg container and format it into the same file system type used by the macOS.

To create a new disk image, open Disk Utility > File > New Image > Blank Image and set the parameters as below.

Name: dmg-name
Size: 25GB  
Partitions: Single parition - GUID Partition Map  
Format: APFS (Case-Sensitive)  
Image Format: read/write disk image  
Encryption: none  

Save this to say Burn Folder, mount it, copy files. Then insert the blu-ray and drag and drop the dmg for burning. This will preserve the file attributes.