What happens to my photos when______?
…fill in the blank at the end of this question.
If you are older, like me, it is “…when I am gone from this earth?”
For others who have lived close to the Colorado fires, or flooding, or other natural disasters, their response would be to name that disaster…
…when my house gets flooded (or even a pipe in the basement breaks)?
…when a tornado rips through my home/storage/barn? (I grew up in West Texas and yes, this happens without warning and often.)
…when a fire breaks out nearby and suddenly engulfs our home? (forest fires do hit neighborhoods –Marshall fire 2021, Waldo Canyon 2012)
…when my phone gets stolen or broken – and I thought I had done photo back-up (but didn’t)
These natural disasters and even the accidents like flooded basements are never things we want to think about happening to us – but they do happen and without warning.
My friend recounts her family’s photos (and her dad was a photographer so there were lots). They were stored in plastic tubs in the basement which did flood. Lids were not really secured and she remembers seeing those tubs floating a bit but more like sunken boats full of water. Lost all their photos.
Yes, we are talking about mostly printed photos – but that brings in a whole new set of “victims” – the genealogists and our ancestors! Or even those who have been the inheritor of the older family photos. Talk about irreplaceable!
But the digital photo world is also fraught with danger. Who has not had an external hard drive crash with loads and loads of scanned and digital photos on them? Or you carefully stored them on CD’s – many, many discs, meticulously labeled, right? How many devices can play those these days? Remember tape recorders?
Then there is the cloud – wherever the heck that is. We are hearing more negatives daily as the owners of those “clouds” either shut down with no notice (there go your photos) or you have a little notice (better hustle). Or you are sent another increase in the cost of that storage space in that ethereal “cloud” – every year.
And how many old computers are lingering in your personal storage space because they have sooo many photos on them?
And the new computers have less and less storage capacity (are they pushing you towards the cloud?) – unless you pay the price for a gaming computer.
Okay, okay… I hear you – enough, already! You know there is a problem. So, Candy, what is the solution?
I will admit that way back in Creative Memories days when they had digital capability, there were two software programs I loved – one was called “Memory Manager”.
It was an organized holding place for digital photos with excellent “photo-fixing” tools, an album-planning tool — utilizing folders, tagging and face recognition & more. I poured my digital photos in there for many years. That included genealogy items.
And I loved that you could work “offline” in the program.
Then….after management changes and bankruptcies, no digital options survived in Creative Memories. Those software programs were no longer serviced.
But God is good, right? The two guys who created (and evidently retained ownership of) the software programs ended up at FOREVER® with an updated, but still very recognizable for me, version of those two software programs.
Yep, I went straight there and bought the new versions of the software. Thankfully, my old “vault” of stored photos transferred right over to a software titled “Historian” a.k.a the new version of Memory Manager. I was saved! Ooops, but the problem was that I kept saving and saving — more digital photos as the years went by went in there.
Then I realized that computers were not able to store that huge “vault” of my photos and I started resorting to using external hard drives. Plus making a back-up copy. And paying for a cloud back-up. And it was getting very wieldy to manage.
I am not sure what really tipped the scales, but a little over a year ago I finally read the website info of FOREVER®. I realized they were my one-stop shopping solution place. It was more than just the software I loved being there, it was that their storage was “permanent”.
And that tickled my fancy as I was in my mind thinking through all my photos and what my kids would (and would NOT) do with my “stuff”. Let’s get real, here.
- I figured they would not be able or willing to open my Historian software, much less navigate it (if they even looked inside the computer)
- And if they did, the 200,000+ photos in it would send them screaming out the door
- And the various genealogical photos scattered throughout my 8 huge boxes of genealogical research papers, sooo unorganized they are, would never be found or understood or….I am getting maudlin, now
So I went to FOREVER® and read their whole friggin’ website. Wow. They are the only place where you can “own” your cloud storage and not just “rent” it like other places. But the amazing piece for me was that they gave a FOREVER® guarantee.
They guaranteed that the items stored in their system would be preserved, protected and available for my lifetime plus 100 years. They have a funded system which makes this possible. And I don’t have to keep backing up, changing formats, etc. They do that. They have a triple backed-up system not beholding to big-tech – no ads, no data mining, ever.
On top of that, I began to delve into their system of curating and creating holding albums for my photos in their permanent storage place. It was easy and very organized – the holding albums were arranged just like I want them.
But the icing on the cake was when I found out you could designate an “Account Manager” right here and now (before I am gone). I could assign and remove them or have multiple active Account Managers at one time.
I could even have sections of my photos/videos/audios/memorabilia that I designated private and direct my account manager to “disappear” those when I was no longer around.
And other sections I could designate to be kept for the duration. The account becomes theirs to add and manage and preserve. Plus the training and helps are accessible as well as the support team is excellent – they will walk them through everything if I am not around.
OK, enough, sorry to bend your ear so much, but it was a huge relief as I realized I had a place to send those “special” memories. And, it was safe from fire, flood, disasters and crashed hard drives.
Yes, yes, you know the problem – I have to make decisions and move those special items over from my humongous “vault” to my permanent storage in FOREVER®. But I am doing it, and feeling better and better every day as I get a little more done.
Plus – I have put in place a system for handling my current photos – which ones go to FOREVER® for storage and which ones are left in the Historian software. These are ones I am not ready to delete, yet. And I don’t expect them to survive when I no longer am present to manage them.
Others have a different system, which may end up being more safe – they are putting all their photos/videos/audios in FOREVER® and doing their sorting there. I may get to that point – it is an option!
All right! Your turn! What happens to YOUR photos when ____________?
If you want to check out FOREVER® yourself, click HERE
Questions? Suggestions? Feedback? Click reply – I love hearing from you.
