And why you should have them digitally in more than one location.
We live in a digital world, and the majority of our portraits are now digital photos. It seems the days of have portraits printed and mailed to the extended family are gone. People would rather post a digital photo onto Facebook or other social media. But, we still need to know the best way to store photographs in this digital world.
But this can present a unique challenge when it comes to our digital photos. Many people keep their digital photos on their phones. Simply because this is how they took the photo in the first place. But phones can be lost, stolen or damaged, along with all the photos you have stored on it. This is no the best way to store photographs. Take it from someone who has lost all the baby photos of their oldest child – this can be heartbreaking.
So, what is one to do? Here are my top 4 tips for storing your digital photos.
Tip 1 – Back up your photos on to a computer and an external hard drive.
To start with, get your photos off your phone and on to your computer. At least this way, you have two copies of them. But don’t stop there. I recommend buying an external hard drive and back up your photos and videos to that as well. I am a huge believer in having multiple copies of my digital photos. Not just because I am a photographer and couldn’t bear the thought of losing a client’s images.
I had the misfortune of having both my computer’s hard drive and the external back up hard drive crash at about the same time. Gone were all the images of my oldest daughter from before she was 4. I was devastated. So, now, it is multiple back ups.
I would recommend an external hard drive as opposed to memory cards or USB sticks. These can be easily lost and are usually tossed into a drawer, where they are forgotten about. Try and stick with external drives, as they aren’t as easily misplaced. They offer large storage capacity. I have been able to store both my personal and my business images on one portable back up drive from 2017 to this year. And I shoot large file sizes across many sessions every year. These are also drives that you own. You are not at the mercy of whomever is running the storage or social media sites.
Some of the draw backs are storing an extra drive, or drives, depending on how many images or videos you have, is cost. These can suffer the same damages from fire, floods, theft, or coffee spills as our phones or computers.
Tip 2 – Back up to a cloud storage service.
On top of backing up to an external hard drive, one of the best places you can back up your photos to is a cloud storage service. There are many companies you can use for this – Google Drive, DropBox, ICloud, or Flickr, to name a few. These are convenient, allowing you access to your photos wherever you happen to have internet. They also usually have large storage space. Many have small starter packs with limited storage, then you will have to upgrade to a paid plan to access more storage.
The draw back of using cloud storage is the monthly ongoing costs of having to use the services once you max out your limited free storage.
Tip 3 – Share on social media (but don’t use this as your only storage solution! It is not the best way to store photographs!)
This tip is how many people store their images. I have heard time and time again. “I just share all my photos on to Facebook so they are there when I want them.” I also share many of my photos on to Facebook and Instagram. It makes it easy to share with my family on the east coast the most current photos of my kids and what we have been up to. I also love the Facebook memories that pop up and share the baby photos of my kids with me years later, making me go “Awe! Remember when they were that little!” I mean, who doesn’t love that?
But don’t make it the only way your store them!
I cringe when people tell me this is the ONLY way they store their old photos. Please don’t do this. This is not the best way to store photographs! I don’t recommend this for a few reasons. Firstly, I have known a few people who have lost their Instagram pages (I have heard of people going into Facebook Jail, but not losing their pages for good) and never getting them back. Because of this, they lose access to all of their photos. Gone. With no way of getting them back.
And what happens if you loose access to these platforms?
Secondly, who knows how long these platforms will exist? Remember MySpace and MSN messenger? Thirdly, if you do decide at some point down the road to print your photos, the photos uploaded to Facebook and other sites go through digital compression, to make the files small enough to allow for fast page load times. But because of this, they loose the file size they need to be printed at high quality, even if you just want a 4″x6″. If you are the person who relies solely on your phone and social media for photo storage, please upgrade to a more lasting solution.
Tip 4 – Print them – the best way to store photographs!
This is probably my favorite tip and in my opinion, the best way to store photographs. Simply print your favorite photos and display them at your house. This way you can enjoy them every day. And when printed at a good quality printer, they will last a life time (provided there is not any fire or floods). This way, you have both the print and the digital file.
I have a 16″x20″ frame that hangs in my dining room that I update the photo in at least once a year. Every time I do, it is a walk down memory lane as I go back through all the photos I’ve left stored in the back of the frame, back to my oldest daughter’s baby photo at two months old. Choose 4″x6″ photos and buy multi frame that will hold 6 or 8 images. Hang framed prints in a stair way. Have a canvas made and hung in the living room. Or have an album made with all your favorites from the year.
The draw back – printing them is an investment.
The draw back to this is cost of the prints (it can be an investment especially if you print large), uncertainty in how large you should print for a space, they can be ruined in a fire or flood, and it seems to be getting harder to find somewhere to have prints made.
I hope this helps inspire you to back up your precious images in a few different places so you never have to know how it feels to loose the images for good. This is my advice on the best way to store photographs. Feel free to reach out here if you have any questions that I can help you with or visit my families page to see more of my work! Here are some of my favorite personal portraits I’ve printed over the years so I can see them every day and not only have a digital version that I can loose.
Leave a reply