It has happened to me, and that is why I am now very careful about backing up my images. It was back in 2011, when we had moved out of our house during the renovations and our belongings were stored in various places, the most of which was at my parents’ home where we were staying.
I realized that I had lost our wedding images.
I had them saved on a disc somewhere as well as an external hard drive…or so I thought.
To this day, I still can’t find them.
BUT, I have two beautiful albums filled with our favourite highlights, as well as a few framed larger prints.
And you know what? That’s enough for us. We actually look through these albums a couple of times a year and one of the prints is displayed across from our kitchen where we see it every day.
Prints matter, prints last, and prints are the best way to preserve your memories and pass them down to your children. If you’ve had a session with me, you’ll know that I offer heirloom quality fine art prints, albums, and framing. When you invest in a custom photography session, it makes sense to invest in high quality printing of those images. You may not do this for every single image, but it’s important to invest in quality for your favourites because you’ll want them to last, and you’ll want to be able to pass them down to your children decades from now with no loss in the image quality or degrading of the papers they’re printed on.
But for the rest of the images, and for those that you take yourself on your own camera or phone, you’ll need a plan for preserving and backing up those images. Because I get asked about photo storage and backup quite regularly, I thought I’d share some helpful tips on how to preserve those precious images so that they don’t get lost. Please note that these are how I back up my personal data and photos; for my professional work, I use these methods PLUS some additional steps to ensure my client work is safe and sound for at least one year after each session.
PRINT THEM
To me, there’s no better way to archive and share images than in printed form. You can print them in a small format (e.g. 4×6, 5×7) and store them in a beautiful box or slip-in album. The boxes could be labeled by year or event and you can either put them in a storage area or display them on your shelves. Should you lose the digital format of these photos, there are several ways you can make a new digital file, which include paid scanning services and phone apps that help reduce glare and distortion. I will make a note to write a blog about this in the future!
Albums and framed prints are my favourite way to display images. Albums take some time to create but if you’re not picky about layout there are many apps and programs where you can literally dump an entire folder of photos and they will turn it into a beautiful album for you!
Framing and displaying prints is also important to me because not only do they add warmth and a sense of belonging to your home, I believe that kids need to see themselves represented in the family home. It builds identity, confidence, and reinforces to them that they are an important member of the household. Not to mention, it’s a great conversation starter when you have guests over!
The following are some companies that I have had personal experience with (either directly or indirectly through friends) that make prints, albums, and other photo products (with a slant towards Canadian companies because, well, I’m Canadian!)
Pikto. They are local to Toronto, Canada, and are my top pick for printing your photos, making enlargements, and creating albums. I have personally printed from them and can vouch for their quality work. If you sign up for updates, or follow their social media accounts, you can often score some good deals during their sales.
Artifact Uprising. They make great photo gifts, prints, and albums, but are US-based so us Canadian residents will get dinged on customs fees. I just got a $20 FedEx bill last week from my holiday orders. Sigh. Their stuff is BEAUTIFUL, though, so I will continue using them for certain gifts that I can’t find locally.
Posterjack. Another local Canadian company. While I personally haven’t used them, one of my very good friends uses them for her enlargements and prints and they are pretty good. And she prints a lot! The colour is not always 100% accurate, but it is good enough for most people’s needs and I would use them if I didn’t have access to my amazing professional lab.
Blacks. I think we can all remember this Canadian store that used to have a presence in every shopping mall. It’s where many of us used to buy and drop off our used film in the when film was so easily accessible and cheap! While they don’t exist in malls anymore, they still have an online presence. I have not tried their photo prints but I have seen their gift mugs in person and they are AWESOME! Seriously, if you need to gift someone a mug with your face on it, this is the place to do it.
DeSerres and Kolo. I always keep my eye out for clean and simple slip-in photo albums and these are two companies that make them. The grey one with the picture window below is the 200-pocket photo album from DeSerres, and my wedding album above is from Kolo (which also has slip-in albums). What I like is their fabric covers that are a solid colour – no busy designs, text, or anything else that would distract from the images or make them seem dated in a few years. In my opinion, they’re timeless.
ONLINE AND DIGITAL BACKUP
Online storage is cheap these days and there are so many options. I’d recommend using an external hard drive as well as an online backup system. I would use caution when depending solely on an external drive (this includes USB sticks) for backups because these mechanical devices can corrupt and stop working without warning or notice, at any time. If using these, please get more than one, and change them out regularly.
The following are some recommended drives and online systems to look into if you’re interested. Again, I know there are LOTS of options out there but these are ones I have personal experience with!
Seagate external drives. This is what I use to back up family and client photos. I have a LOT of them, and I usually buy them from Best Buy (their sales are fantastic and they have free shipping). I buy at least one per year (I got a 6T one during Black Friday week for $115CAD) and copy everything important over to it. If you have a laptop, they also have portable ones that aren’t quite as large as the 4-6T ones I use for my desktop.
Cloud backup services. Online storage is cheap (e.g. most yearly plans cost less than a pair of sneakers), and should some disaster strike your computer or home (e.g. flooding, theft, fire…which I hope NEVER happens to you) you’ll be able to restore your computer and access your images online. For less than $100 per year, you can back up your entire hard hard drive and external drives with services like iDrive and Backblaze which are well reviewed as two of the best options for this type of service. They literally work in the background and you don’t have to do very much, if anything at all, once you’re all set up. Go ahead and Google “online cloud backup” and you’ll be greeted with lots of reviews and options. I use Backblaze because it’s a “set it and forget it” service with unlimited storage and it backs up my entire desktop plus all connected external drives. It’s peace of mind for under $100CAD per year. WORTH IT.
Google Photos. This option is perfect for all the hundreds (or maybe thousands?!) of phone snaps that you take and it is FREE and has UNLIMITED storage. And doesn’t EVERYONE have a Google/Gmail account these days, anyways?! The only downside is that it will compress high resolution files if they are higher than 16MP (as of this post, the new iPhone X camera takes 12MP photos, so it’s a non-issue). You can download the app for your phone (android or iOS) as well as your desktop. If you’d prefer to back up your “original” higher resolution images (e.g. from your digital camera or from a professional session), you can pay annually for increased storage space and they have several tiers starting at $30/year for 100GB of storage. It really isn’t a lot of money when you think about how valuable your images are.
BEFORE YOU MOVE ON
If you’re still feeling overwhelmed, don’t hesitate to get in touch because I’d be happy to discuss all of this in more detail with you! Also, if you’ve had a session with me and haven’t gotten to printing or archiving your session images, I can help you figure out how to preserve those very special memories. Send me an email or give me a call because I would love to hear from you!
-Jessica
