.back up family memories
I will start by saying I know that I am an over-saver. Always paranoid that something will happen to my backup so I want another backup. I started in film photography and always felt safer with physical negatives that I could see. I still have a bit of doubt in digital filing and saving. So that being said, here is how I have saved my families memories.
Once the kids were born I was torn on what to do for their pictures. I knew that I wanted to have something physical they could look at and I had done lots of digital books of mine and Adam’s trips and things. But I also picture looking through my baby book as a child and having an actual picture to look at. So I settled for printing out every picture they had in their first year and putting them in a giant leather album. So both of my children have a baby book. And every year since my son was born I have made an end of the year digital album with our pictures from the year in them. That is what I do to make sure we actually have something printed to look through.
Backing up
As far as backing up our digital files and videos I have started making a year folder. For instance, this year’s folder is 2017 and then there is a 2017 videos folder. As the year goes on I will pull pictures off my camera, my phone, and I will pull some off of facebook from the kid’s school or church that they are in. I name them all after the date they were taken. For instance 20170807-001. That way they all automatically fall into chronological order as they happened and if I want Christmas pictures I know to look in December or back to school in August..etc.
Those stay on my computer which I back up to a giant external hard drive regularly. (This is my backup that is probably a little too cautious) And then at the end of the year, I will back up the 2017 folder and 2017 video folder to a small external hard drive that is only my personal pictures. I used to burn them to a disk every year. I also back up personal and studio stuff to an online service from time to time to make sure if my house ever burned down I wouldn’t lose everything.
