The Preservation of Your Photographic Life

Memories. Whether they last for 50 years or 50 seconds, we all have a mental ability to store information. And of all the types of information we are able to cram in our skulls, none are more important, or more priceless, than the experiences we have and the people we encounter along the way. The downfall to our memories, however, is that, over time, the details of an experience can start to get a little fuzzy. But thanks to the wonderful world of photography, we never have to give it a second thought.

Ever since Joseph Nicéphore Niépce created the first permanent photograph back in 1825, the amazing evolution of photography has completely changed the way we capture our life's experiences. And in our modern world, digital photography is able to do this in ways Niépce couldn't possibly imagine. Vacations, new additions to the family, a day at the park, sunsets on the beach, birthday parties: these are experiences that we have all taken through the lenses of our shiny digital cameras. Cool, huh? But with all these digital photos piling up in your hard drive, you need to ask yourself one very simple question: "Are these photos really that important?"

Now looking through photos of your family outings, your daughter's first birthday, or your own wedding, you may think to yourself: "That's a stupid question. Of course these pictures are important!" OK, if that's the case, then let me ask you another question: how many duplicates of your photos do you have? If your answer is "none", then you and I need to have a little chat.

Back in the day - say, 15 years ago or more - we would take our little rolls of film to wherever and get them developed. Once they were finished, we would receive our freshly-printed photos and their respective negatives. Those awesome pictures mightly eventually grace the pages of a photo album, sit in picture frames, or get stowed in a shoe box, but what happened to the negatives? Did you keep them or throw them away? It just so happens that the photo negative was the very first backup. If, for any reason, your photos got lost or damaged, you could take the negatives back to the store and get those pictures reprinted. However, if you didn't have those negatives, you were out of luck. This is the very same scenario you could face if you don't take the proper steps of backing up your digital photos.

With the multitude of options available to help preserve and protect your collection, there's no reason why your photos can't last forever, no matter what happens. I have unfortunately seen and heard too many "Oh my God, I lost all my photos!!" incidents over the past few months, and I think it's important for everyone to know their options.  So after many years of trial and error, here are my recommendations:

External Hard Drive
It is my personal opinion that if you own a computer, you need an external hard drive. If you need more storage space, but don't want to go through the hassle of opening up your computer, an external hard drive is a perfect choice.  For less than $100, you can get a hard drive with 1 terabyte of disk space.  That's enough space for over 600,000 average-sized photos!  For many people, that's a lifetime of photographs.  Hooking up the hard drive is a breeze, with nearly all of them having a simple USB connection and power cable.

Backup Software
As a compliment to an external hard drive, software that backs up your files automatically is a true life saver.  I'll give you my setup as an example.  Every photo I take gets stored in the default pictures folder on my computer.  But to protect those photos from a hard drive failure, my backup software automatically copies any new photos I add to an external hard drive each night.  This way, I have two copies of my entire photo collection in case either hard drive fails.

Scanner
Anyone old enough to remember the days of film developing more than likely has a fairly good collection of photographs stuffed in albums or shoeboxes somewhere.  These photos are also prime candidates for digital preservation - and that's where a scanner comes in.  Simple flatbed scanners can be had for less than $100 and can scan at very high resolutions.  All the detail of a photograph can be preserved, and the scanner's own software might also be able to automatically restore a photo that has faded over time.  Depending on the number of photos you have, scanning them all can be rather time-consuming, but in the end, it's worth the effort.

Disc Backup
If you don't want to spend the money on an external hard drive, a cheaper backup method would be to copy your photos to blank DVDs or CDs.  You can get a bulk spindle of 100 blank DVDs for around $30.  That amounts to almost 500 GBs of storage space.  And for even further protection, you could store those newly-burned discs in a fire-proof safe.

Online Backup
For the ultimate in photo protection and peace of mind, you can sign up for an online file backup service.  With their large data centers and redundant backups, these services (either free or for a small monthly fee, depending on how much storage you need) allow you to upload your photos to their hard drives and have access to them whenever you want and wherever you are.  And unlike social media sites like Facebook and MySpace that actually compress and shrink your photos to fit on their pages, these backup services let you upload your full-resolution photos to their data centers, keeping the original quality when they were first taken.  Depending on the speed of your internet connection, it may take some time to upload your photos to them, but once they're there, if for some catastrophic reason your own computers and hard drives are destroyed, your photos are safe and sound.

There are many options available to keep your photos safe, but in my opinion, the options I've listed above are the best options for protecting and preserving your valuable photo collection.  You just need to decide which method is the right one for you.  And if you have other backup methods you like, please share them.

Mechanical failure or human error can wipe out years worth of memories in a second, so take the time to ensure that your photographic life will last a lifetime.