I’m always urging my clients, as well as my friends and family, to save and print their photos, so it feels very fitting to write about this on the blog. I sometimes feel like a broken record, but I’m really passionate about this!
I feel strongly that we should all be preserving our special memories in photographs, and that they should be printed, shared and enjoyed rather than just left on a phone, USB or computer drive to be forgotten.
Why bother saving your photos?
Whether personal snapshots on your phone or professional images that you’ve had taken on important family occasions like the birth of your new baby, photographs are important. They’re precious memories that will remain as significant in your family’s life in the future as they are today.
In fact, when babies have all grown up and moved out of the family home, when family members have aged or passed away, I’d argue that these photos get even more valuable with time.
When our loved ones are no longer with us, photos are what keep those special memories alive. Which is why saving your family photographs is so important.
Saving your photos will ensure that they’ll be preserved for you – and future generations – to view and enjoy in the future.
How safe are your favourite photos?
You might well think that your photos are safely stored on your smartphone or your camera’s memory card, so you don’t need to worry about saving and printing your family photographs.
Or, that if you upload your favourites to social media sites like Facebook or Instagram, that they’re safe there and that you can access them whenever you want.
But the truth is, if you don’t have a system in place for saving and backing up your photos, and you don’t do it regularly, these hundreds or thousands of wonderful memories could be easily lost forever!
I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, but cameras and phones do break.
I’ve dropped my phone countless times, smashed the screen and damaged it. If you have all your photos saved on your phone and not backed up elsewhere, and then you either break your phone or if it’s stolen, then it’ll be awful to discover that those memories are lost forever.
Also, I would never advise you to rely on social media.
Facebook may disappear one day and along with it, all your precious photos! Eek! That doesn’t even bear thinking about! Please, please download all your photos off social media sites if that is the only place where you have them saved.
Three ways to save your family photographs
1. Regularly save your photos to an external hard drive
On a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis (depending on how many photos you take and how risk-averse you are), save your photos from your phone or camera to an external hard drive. Also, use a photo scanner or app to digitize any old photos.
This may sound like a lot but to put this into context, as a professional photographer doing multiple photoshoots every day, I back up my camera several times a day just to be safe.
Having your photos stored on an external hard drive means that if your computer or phone is lost or damaged, you’ll have a safe backup.
Affordable external hard drives nowadays can hold up to around 3-5TB of data, meaning that you can probably store your entire back catalogue of photos onto one device. They are also small, portable and easy to use.
2. Back up your photos to a cloud-based storage solution
Cloud storage is also very affordable and allows you to access your photos from anywhere in the world. This, arguably, makes it an even better option to external hard drives, since they too can get broken, lost or damaged.
Thankfully, most phones offer the option of storing photos and data on the cloud and can be set up so that new photos are automatically backed up as they are taken.
If you have this option with your phone, do take advantage of it as this will give you an important backup which you can retrieve if and when you need it.
Services like Dropbox offer a cloud-based solution and are ideal for storing important photos and files.
3. Print your photographs
Printing photographs is a great way to ensure that your favourites are saved.
I’d recommend that you print out copies of your favourite photos, have them collated into a photo album or have them made into wall art and have them hanging on the walls of your home. That way you can enjoy them in a larger size and be reminded of those special moments on a daily basis too.
Our photo packages include printed wall art products because here at Kingshill Studios, we’re passionate about helping our clients to preserve their special memories. It’s an additional investment to have your photos printed, but one that none of our clients has ever regretted.
Do you routinely save your family photographs?
Have you got all your family photographs saved somewhere or could you do with setting aside some time to get this done? I hope this has been useful and would love to hear from you.
Do comment below to share with us how you save your family photographs. Do you have any other tips to share?
To enquire about booking a photoshoot with us, here at our photography studio in Aberdeen, please get in touch. We hope to see you soon!
Related reading:
How to get the most value from your professional family photos
