How to back up and use your portraits- let’s digital disaster proof our photos!

We’ve all been there. We drop our phone in the water, or our computer gives us the screen of death and just like that: everything is GONE. It’s the worst feeling in the world and it happens every day.
Let’s talk about THREE WAYS to “digital disaster” proof your session images and all the other images in your life.

Why we should have prints & products?

1. PRINTS & PRODUCTS: printing your images out as 5×7 gift prints or getting them printed in an album is a great way for your images to live beyond the computer. This way, if anything happens to your digital images, you have tangibles to hold on to.

If you think about those wedding images from your great great grandparents- they are printed. And you still have them? Right? The main media source we used over 100 years ago is still the same as it is today- and if you ask me, thats pretty incredible, and a sign of something that might actually survive. You always hear people say, when hurricanes are barreling down, they grab the albums, and the wall art. Why? because it matters. Memories, and our roots matter. While printing has improved for our memories, the same medium is still pretty darn amazing. And I don’t know ab9out you, but I would much rather sit down and flip through some photos on paper, then on my phone.

Why should we use a second drive?

2. SECONDARY DRIVE: save your digitals on another drive and put that drive in a safe. This is good for every image that is important to you.

Hard drives fail. And then, they fail again. Let’s take a moment and think of what happened today when Facebook and Instagram went down. How many of us have years and years of bad iphone memories trapped in the walls of those tow social media outlets? When I went to work on Ashleigh’s video for her senior party, sadly, my main source of back up was Facebook {how stupid is that}?!? Also, sadly, when I printed out said “iphone” gems— the quality was awful. While we pay a lot for these phones, remember they are phones, and used for about 100 other things, and good photos isnt one of them. YES, as a 2×2 square they look amazing, but outside of that, they are useless. But, even at useless size, you dont want to lose that video of your baby singing, or the adorable 5 year old Halloween outfit, so keep those babies backed up, and on a secondary drive, especially anything on your computer! See the next section…

Dropbox is the winner!

3. BACK THEM UP: save your images on the cloud. Or Dropbox. Or any other online system! You will be so glad you did in case your computer crashes!

I am a HUGE fan on the cloud. But not just any system. I love DROPBOX. Dropbox acts like a C drive on your computer, and is also accessible on your phone, which to me is a winner. Its non- gender- meaning it isnt Windows OR mac. If you home computer is a PC, but you use an iphone, and a mac at work- who cares? Dropbox speaks to all of them! If you back up to one place, then you only have to search ONE PLACE. Anyone who has had to do a deep dive to find that ONE photo of Aunt Betty at Christmas 5 or maybe 6 years ago knows… one black hole to get sucked in to is enough. And, if you set it up like a C drive, then it becomes that back up drive you need on your computers {again either Mac or PC}- but with the redundancy of the cloud, and the responsibility of dropbox to maintain it!

Backing up data is so important, but so is printing these memories that we have! surrounding ourselves with iour loved ones is not just pretty to look, its good for the soul! And BONUS: if you do all three, you can sleep easy! You’ve done everything you can to ensure you still have your images in the case of any issues that could arise! So tell me… do YOU do any of these things?!?