Are your photos safe? I mean REALLY safe.  Are you sure?

I personally rely on my photos to freeze time.  Kids grow up way too fast; pets and loved ones pass away (sometimes unexpectedly and without warning).  As we age, our memories fade, but photos can bring back those memories or even keep them from ever fading in the first place. This is why my photos are one of my most treasured possessions.

I want to talk to you about making sure you don't lose your photos.  This is a subject I am highly passionate about (it's kind of my soap box) so much so that I help some family members back up their photos every year. 

Here is what I recommend to make sure your photos are safe:

Upload, Share, Print, Burn

Here are the details of those 4 steps:

1. Every month, UPLOAD your photos to an online photo web site.  I recommend Shutterfly at http://www.shutterfly.com (best quality, easy to use, great share feature, but not the cheapest) or Kodak at http://www.kodakgallery.com (nice quality, easy to use, great share feature, cheaper than shutterfly).  Some people do this every 3 months by season. Personally, I prefer monthly because I take lots of photos and 3 months worth of photos is just too much for me to work through at one time.  Doing this monthly makes it much more manageable for me.
   
   This ensures that if your house burns down or when (not if) your computer crashes, you can go to these sites and buy CDs of your photos to replace what you have lost.
   
   
2. Every month, after you upload, SHARE to friends and family by sending them email from the site with link to your photos.  This keeps people connected in our busy lives even if we live relatively nearby and personally I think that is REALLY important. 
   
   
3. Every month, after you share, PRINT at least 10-25 of the photos you have uploaded. 
   
   This ensures 3 things: first the sites (Shutterfly or Kodak) require you to place at least 1 order per year for them to store all of your photos forever and ever; second, everyone (you included but more importantly especially your kids) will enjoy your photos more if you have some printed and stored in slip in pocket photo albums and some framed and displayed in your home.  This is a huge self-esteem builder for your kids and I think that is really, really important; third, when (not if) your computer crashes, you at least have some prints while you are re-creating your digital files from the site. 
   
   I store my photos in these albums that I learned about from Stacy Julian's Library of Memories class at Big Picture Scrapbooking.  That class is absolutely, hands down, worth EVERY penny!  I HIGHLY recommend that class. I order from Costco.com (this is the cheapest I have found them at $19.99 for 2 albums in a pack together). http://www.costco.com/Browse/Productgroup.aspx?Prodid=11173520. These albums are also available at Scrapbook.com:  http://store.scrapbook.com/p-bta-204bgdy.html.   
   
   
4. Lastly, BURN a DVD backup of your photos every 3 months (quarterly).  So around the 1st of April, burn a DVD of 1Q-2008 photos from Jan-Mar, etc.... this is really the hardest part.  We're all busy and this is just one of those maintenance tasks that we push to the back burner.  Try to do it as often as you can, but don't go more than 1 year without doing this. 
   
   Store your DVD backups in another location from your home, maybe your office, maybe a friends home. Do not give it to someone who will lose them.  You need that person to be able to find them ASAP if you need them.  Do not store them with someone who is going to get mad at you and throw them away or never return your calls. The reason is if your house burns down you can get your DVD copies from the other location or if the web site you're using goes out of business, you have another backup.
   
   This is what I do for my cousin each year.  I copy her photos to my external hard drive, and then I make DVDs for her to keep at her house so she can either delete them from her computer to free up hard disk space or just keep them for when her computer crashes.  If her DVDs get destroyed we have a copy on my external hard drive.  When my hard drive crashes, we can re-create the copy from her DVDs.
   
   Now, not all DVDs are created equally.  There is a huge amount of technical information about archival quality DVDs.  Personally, I believe you get what you pay for.  I purchased Verbatim UltraLife Gold Archival Grade DVD-R and CD/DVD Disc Marker Pen from SuperMediaStore at http://www.supermediastore.com. You also have to be careful what you use to label your DVDs.  I have only done a tiny bit of research on DVDs.  If anyone else has better information, please let me know! 

Ok - I have 2 more things I want to caution you about:

• Computers and external hard drives WILL crash.  It is not a matter of IF it is a matter of WHEN.  And usually they crash without any warning that they are about to give up and out which results in much crying and gnashing of teeth and sometimes even some cursing.  I'm speaking from experience!
  
  
• Web sites sometimes disappear in the middle of the night.  This has also happened to me - I am speaking from experience.  It was not a big deal for me because I had my photos stored on my computer, printed, and backed up on DVD. So, I just shrugged my shoulders and said, oh well, and found another site.  There were others not so fortunate.  They uploaded their photos to the web site and then deleted them from their computers so when the web site went away, so did their only copy of their photos! The horror of that is heartbreaking! Seriously, I'm not trying to be melodramatic.  But, the thought of that nightmare will make me wake up in a cold sweat. Shutterfly has been around for a long time and Kodak is a very well respected name in the photography industry. This is why I recommend both them.  I believe that the risk of either of these sites disappearing in the middle of the night is very low.

And now, I'm done - off my soap box.  PLEASE let me know if you have questions about any of this.  I'd be happy to teach you how to do any of this if you want.

Don't forget:   Upload, Share, Print, Burn 

Everybody say it with me now: Upload, Share, Print, Burn   ;)