We don’t like to be the bearers of bad news… Heck, who does?! But someone has to break the ice, so we’ll do it because we care about you, your family, and your family’s portraits. Alright, so the thing is…

There’s no such thing as a digital heirloom.

Okay, we know that’s probably not what you thought we were going to say. And while we all love a good essay hook, we feel that this is an incredibly important conversation that we need to have with you (virtually, that is).

The harsh reality of the 21st century is that digital images can and will fail more often than you think. They are not “archival” and will not necessarily stand the test of time. Digital images are essentially the “negatives” of digital photography and they need to be printed to become a tangible heirloom that WILL stand the test of time.

Whether you’ve stored your photos in the cloud, put them on Facebook, Instagram or even backed them up to a hard drive, or done all of the above, digital images just aren’t a guarantee. Hard drives fail, digital files can become corrupted and even lost completely. Facebook and Instagram are owned by Facebook and are not guaranteed to be here forever. Technology is constantly changing and it’s getting harder and harder to keep up with it or know for certain that our media storage will remain accessible.

Check out these mind-blowing statistics from Professional Photographers of America during their nationwide survey:

67% of survey respondents store their photos solely on a computer or phone

Less than 33% of people actively back up photos and data on their phones
70% of people do not have photo albums
42% of people no longer print photos at all
53% of people haven’t printed a photo in 12+ months

These statistics are only growing in numbers year by year. We are losing our photographic history and don’t even realize it. The only way to protect our memories and preserve this generation’s history is to print our photographs. Would you like the future generations of your family to be able to find the photographs of our generation? I would like my grandchildren and great grandchildren to find and enjoy ours!

This is what we do in our family and what I recommend for yours:

We back up all of our personal images in multiple places: 2 external hard drives AND an online cloud space that can be shared and accessed between all of us. We also print our favorite pictures, then label them with a date and place, and put them in a shoebox. This way they can be found, some day in the future, if the digital pictures are not accessible and/or if people don’t know they exist. (How would they know?) I hope the photo boxes will be a sort of “time capsule” and similar to my own grandma and grandpa’s attic where the family treasures were found. My family loves to look at the old pictures of not only themselves but the photographs of past generations that I’ve found in my grandparent’s attic.

Another very important reason to print your favorite photographs is to enjoy them right now! There is something special about a tangible printed image that you can touch, whether it is on your wall, in a desk top frame, in an album on your coffee table or even in a pretty box in the living room. I keep a box of my favorite photographs for the current year in a cute box on the living room table where we can pull them out and enjoy them. Those will eventually go into my “Time Capsule” boxes to make room for new pictures.

We challenge you to take this step in preserving your family history! We hope you will consider backing up your photos and store them somewhere other than on your phone and on Facebook. We also hope you will print your favorite family memories to enjoy and cherish forever. As Professional Photographers of America says: