Take TONS of Photographs…
Being married to an amazing photographer, our family is blessed with a treasure trove of photographs. A yearly, monthly…and sometime weekly photojournalistic diary of our lives.
One word of advice that I would give parents (and couples…or individuals for that matter) is to take photos. A lot. Carry a camera with you. Keep one in your car. Use your iPhone or Smartphone (I prefer my iPhone)…but take photos. Also…take video…tons of video.
My boys are only 11 and 8, but sometimes we pull out our family videos…and just laugh out loud. We have an apple TV that will stream a montage of Family photos… Photos are the one thing that really help your memory. They really help you NOT forget parts of your life as when you get older…it seems that the memory is not all there.
I would think that photos are at the top of the list of items that you would grab if a fire occurred!? Well..at least I would.
By all means, I am not saying that educating your children…or showing them love is second to taking photos…but I am very passionate about pictures of my family.
The downside of digital photos is at times, they are just there on your camera, phone…or computer. You do need to frame photos. You do need to display them. You do need to share them. Print images and frame them. We have so many photos on our walls…that I am going to one day spend 4 days patching all the holes in the wall form the frames.
The other issue we have now is space. Not wall space, but data/computer/memory space. All these images. Where do you keep them. Are they secure? Saving on CD & DVD are great if you are transferring from one device to another..but..for long term, they need to be saved on a hard drive. Multiple hard drives if possible. “The Cloud” is a great option. Yes…the cloud. Offsite storage that you can access from anywhere.
I am no IT Guru…but have learned a lot by trial and error (and from my IT partner and savior in California…Thomas H.)
Here are some options for image storage.
www.lnclocker.com (Offsite storage for all your photos, documents, and you can set up to continually back up your computer…daily). I use this service and it has become invaluable.
www.dropbox.com (I also use this service…but thinking of merging it with my locker.)
www.instagram.com (Instagram has grown to over 80 million members in less than 2 years.. WOW. Maybe that’s the reason Facebook paid $1,000,000,000.00 for it. Yes Billion with a B. It is one of the quickest ways to share your images with family and friends. Plus they are backed up off site.)
www.flickr.com (I would say currently one of the oldest forms of online photo storage and sharing. I don’t use it…but know that a lot do.)
But…don’t wait to have a backup system before you start taking your photos…just take them.
