Take this little quiz to see how safe your family memories are!
All you need to do is answer these questions about what you do with your personal photos. Be honest now! Keep a tally of your score as you go along.
Storage
1 Do all of your photos automatically get uploaded to cloud storage?
a) ‘Yes.’ Give yourself 2 points.
b) ‘No, but I upload them when I remember.’ You can have 1 point.
c) ‘No, they stay where they are.’ Zero points!
Unfortunately, phones/cameras can get lost, broken, corrupted or even dropped into the toilet… Don’t be left staring at a bag of rice praying that those important pics are recoverable!
Clear outs
2 If your photos get uploaded to the cloud, how often do you have a clear out of all the random screenshots, silly memes, snapchat pictures or weird blurry selfies that your kids have taken?
a) Every week? 5 points.
b) Every month? 3 points.
c) Every few months? 2 points.
d) Maybe once a year? 1 point.
e) Never? Why are keeping all that junk?!!!
Ask yourself, will you look back fondly in years to come at that screenshot of a Google map of the A695? Will you ever want to print all sixty-seven Santa hat selfies that your nine year old took on Christmas day? (Ok, you can keep one of them, but JUST one!) Keeping too many pointless images makes it much harder to find the good ones. It also makes you less likely to print your photos as your cloud becomes too overwhelming to sift through.
Printing
3 Talking of printing, what do you do with your photos, after you have backed them up of course?
a) ‘I print my favourite photos monthly and put them somewhere where my family and I can see them and enjoy them.’ You are SO organised, have 5 points.
b) ‘I make an annual photobook of our family memories.’ Great stuff, 4 points.
c) ‘I send some of my photos digitally to friends and family.’ 3 points.
d) ‘I have online albums and share the link with family and friends.’ 2 points.
e) ‘I share them to my social media accounts.’ 1 point.
f) ‘They float around my cloud looking pretty.’ Zero points!
It is important to ask, why do you take photos? If it is purely to get a few likes, why not just post them then delete them? If however it is because you are preserving memories, capturing your personal narrative or family’s precious moments, then you really need to think about doing something with them. There are so many affordable options for printing our photos nowadays. You can even print straight from social media. There are photobooks, pretty little boxes, sticky prints for your wall… what is holding you back? Make a point of printing some of your favourites this year, you will get so much pleasure from them you will want to keep doing it!
Leaving them behind
4 So, you have the last ten years or so of your family memories sitting there safely in your cloud. Maybe you have printed your favourites, but there will be lots that you don’t print but that still hold precious memories. What I want you to think about now is, who has the password to your cloud? Who can access them from anywhere other than on your phone?
a) ‘My password is written down and kept somewhere safe with our other important family documents such as passports and birth certificates’ Whoop, whoop, give yourself 5 points.
b) ‘My partner knows my password’ Not bad, you get 2 points.
c) No one else knows my password’ Oh deary me… No points.
We are reminded frequently to keep our passwords safe, to not use obvious phrases etc. But have a think about it, who knows what is around the corner… If no one else knows where to find all your cloud photos, what happens if you are no longer around? It isn’t just your own history that would be lost, but your family’s too. This is another reason to print lots, and print regularly!
So how did you get on?
If you scored 10 or more points, well done, I think you are doing ok. You obviously value your family photographs and you are saving precious memories for future generations. If you scored less than 10 points, you might need to have a little think about what you do with your photos. Have a read of my blog post ‘The Importance of Family Photography’ and consider doing more with the images you do have so that they can easily be enjoyed for years to come.
Drop a comment below to let me know how well you did, and feel free to pick my brains about ways to best organise you family photos. And if you would like to know about how I can capture family memories on your behalf, go and have a look at my family sessions page.
family history photos | durham family photographer | newcastle family photographer | how to keep memories safe