According to an article in Better Homes & Gardens (may 2012) 86% of digital photos never leave their memory cards!  Ouch!  If your camera is lost, stolen or the dog erases your cards are you going to lose precious memories?     

I recommend that at least once a month you copy all of your digital photos from your camera and your phone to your computer. Feel free to edit (delete) the yucky ones! If you don’t feel it’s worthy of printing or pitting in a album someday it can go in a “non critical” folder. The rest- organize and back up! A cd or DVD doesn’t cut it long term. What will your grand kids think if they find a cd in the attic of your wedding photos and no prints… 10 years from now they will likely be unreadable by most computers. When’s the last time you used a floppy disk?

If its truly a valuable image- print it and keep digital back ups… Prints can be made in expensively and are a true archival method. Make a goal to print at least ten or fifteen images each month.

Organize them so you can find it later. I like folders. I have a “working images” folder for each year. In that year I have Categories (for me it’s client type) perhaps for you it could be by sport or vacation or family gatherings. Each new event gets a folder all to itself in its right category. Many people do well with labeling their folders by type and date. Ie if you go on a camping trip this summer in cadillac Michigan- the folder hierarchy would be like this… 2012 photos –> family vacations –> Cadillac July 2012

This way finding that photo of the kids playing on the beach is much easier!!

Back up in whatever method works best for you but remember no method is fool proof. Several copies of the most important items is always best! Try online methods like shutterfly or back up your whole computer using a backup to the cloud method like crash plan.

How do you keep your images safe?