Please, print your digital files!

Last week, one of my clients emailed me about a problem that many of us could face. Her computer had crashed and she had lost most of her son’s pictures as they were stored on the hard drive. I had photographed him as a Newborn and he was a Watch me Grow baby as well so he had pictures at 4, 8 and 12 months. All these wonderful memories were gone forever.

Of course I had kept her pictures safely and did send a replacement but I can only keep them for a year and then I have to delete them. I have too many sessions to keep everything indefinitely.

But this got me thinking… Did you know that digital files are not archival?

Do you remember the floppy disk? Floppy disks were incredibly widely used for 10+ years.  Eventually they were replaced by something better, of course, but what about all the files that were on them? Most couldn’t be read again or were incomprehensible because technology had moved on.  Do you own a USB floppy disk drive to read all your old floppies?  Of course you don’t!

The same is happening with CDs. They are being replaced by USB drives and a lot of laptops now don’t even have a CD drive. So how will you be able to see your beautiful pictures?

The solution is quite simple: PRINT YOUR DIGITAL FILES!

We can still see prints from the 18th century! Ok, the quality is not the best but they can easily be scanned and repaired with photoshop and be printed again!

How wonderful is it to find pictures of yourself as a child with your parents or siblings? Wouldn’t you want your children to be able to see their pictures as well?

As a little girl, I remember bringing bags and bags of photographs at weekends and we would sit as a family and look at them together. It is such a strong memory that I have done the same for my children. I print pictures every so often and have a box to put them in. They don’t have to be huge and they have an important impact on my boys. They love sitting and looking at them one by one, asking me who this baby is (it’s either one or the other, or sometimes on of their cousins)!

And be honest, when you receive digital files, what do you do with them? Most will leave the USB drive in a drawer and forget about those lovely pictures…

Because nobody ever said “Oh hunny, look how gorgeous that cd looks on our wall”!

Feel free to let me know when you have printed your pictures!

Sandra x