Protect Your Digital Photos

Sarah is typical of most young women today, balancing her marketing career, running a household, and enjoying her 10-month old son, Grayson.  There just doesn’t seem to be enough time to complete daily chores, let alone additional projects. However, after Jack, her husband, accidentally erased the memory card with the family’s photos of their recent trip to visit Sarah’s parents in Florida, she decided to take on the task of organizing and protecting the family’s memories. “It wasn’t as though we had lost our entire collection, but those photos were irreplaceable,” Sarah said. “Luckily, we were able to find a software program that recovered most of the pictures from the card. Otherwise, Jack may still be sleeping on the couch.”

Organizing and Protecting our Digital Lives
In the 10 months since Grayson was born, Sarah estimates she has accumulated more than 1500 photos on her notebook hard drive, and an additional 500 on several different flash cards. “We’re always taking photos--every trip to the park, every event, and every holiday. My camera stays in my purse,” says Sarah with a smile. 

When she first started chronicling Grayson’s life, Sarah admitted that she did little more than fill flash cards, uploading some to Facebook or Shutterfly, and printing a few to share. “I guess I thought that as long as the photos were somewhere, they were safe. Organizing them seemed too overwhelming. I didn’t know where to start, and I didn’t have the time. Losing the Maine vacation photos with my parents was really the wakeup call I needed to take action.”

The first thing she did was move all of the photos to her notebook hard drive. “Next, I organized them under the “Pictures” folder, creating subfolders for the year, then the event, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas,” she said. “This was the most time- consuming task, but I started with the most recent photos and worked my way back, a little at the time, and I actually enjoyed seeing some of the photos I’d forgotten about!”

Next, she burned copies of the files to DVDs. “The one thing I’ve learned is that you have to have multiple copies of your photos. My digital photo collection is still relatively small by today’s standards, so all the files fit on one DVD. I made two copies. I took one to work, and gave the other to Jack’s mom for safe-keeping. I plan on doing this after every event or holiday, since it only takes a few minutes.”

“After my photos were organized and copied, I started to do simple edits. Nothing fancy, just cropping and color correction using Picasa. Someday, when I find the time, I want to buy software that lets me do more creative tasks like digital scrapbooking. But that’s further down the road”. 

Doing More with Your Memories
In the course of her online research, Sarah found a number of excellent informational and resource sites including PhotoStorageGuide.com, created to provide consumers with a trusted source of information on sharing and protecting digital memories. The site also gave her an overview of her storage/archiving options and step-by-step instructions. “PhotoStorageGuide.com showed me some really cool things I could do with my photos,” Sarah noted. “Last week, I made a slideshow of our 4th of July celebration and emailed it to my mother, sister, and best friend. Setting our photos to music adds such a sentimental, personal touch. My photos are no longer lost on memory cards and computers. Managing my memories has actually become a hobby that I can enjoy for years to come.”

To learn more about photo storage and archiving, visit PhotoStorageGuide.com.

<< Back to the Articles

Add Comments >>