Protecting Your Memories – Digital and Printed

You’ve put the time and effort into picking your photographer and booking your shoot.  You thought through your outfit options, possibly had your hair and make-up professionally done (or maybe paid for a smooth, close shave, gentlemen?), and now the shoot is over.  Precious memories PRESERVED.  Bam!

Perhaps you’re happy to purchase your images in digital form only and for obvious reasons.  For instance, you can share them online.  (Social media like Facebook and Instagram are essentially modern day photo albums that you can flip through at will.)  Secondly, preserving images on a USB stick or DVD is conveniently tiny.

I offer digital images because I understand the desire to keep the image files for future projects.  Unlike your grandparents, your wedding portrait hanging on your wall doesn’t have to be the only copy in the family to preserve for the future.  Imagine someday your children put together a surprise album of your life and the images in it are as crisp and colourful as the day they were taken.

There is a dark side to consider:

  • Most USB’s and discs are guaranteed to work for only 5 to 10 years, after which your images will slowly begin to deteriorate.  Not only that, but USB sticks and CD’s are easily lost or damaged.  These are simply not long term storage options.
  • Technology tends to move on and become obsolete.  For example, I’m learning that many laptops aren’t manufactured with a disc drive these days.  There may come a time when you can’t even access your images anymore.  Floppy disks, anyone?
  • Computers, hard drives, even phones can be stolen.  Poof.  Gone.  Technology holds value and can be wiped clean and resold.  It’s much harder to imagine that anyone is planning to steal and sell your printed photo canvases or wedding album.

To protect your memories, I highly recommend backing up your images frequently on different mediums – Cloud storage, multiple external storage drives, etc.

On the flip side, what is the point of having these photos taken if they’re sitting in a drawer on a USB?  Portraits are art.  Memories are meant to be seen!  Walls are meant to be filled!  There’s something wonderful about sitting down with an album and strolling through the images there.  As a photographer, nothing makes me happier than knowing that you want to be reminded of a moment every time you walk by it.

If you’re going to print your images – and please, please do – be choosey about where you print.  Print labs are not made the same.  Let me show you why.

We have a number of consumer printing labs locally available here in Red Deer, Alberta.  Out of curiosity, I conducted a little test.  I took the same images to each lab and asked them to print without any corrections or adjustments.  I sent the same images to Technicare, the Edmonton based professional lab that I order my prints through.  Each was scanned and compared to the original, unprinted image.  Take a look:

As you can see, the print lab you use has a strong impact on the overall look of your images.

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    This is the happy story of a girl, her camera, and the people they meet on their journey. That's me up there. I'm Jess and I'm based in Central Alberta. Read more...

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    One Bright Day

    Wedding and portrait photographer

    serving Central Alberta.