What is the number one mistake we see people make with their photos?
This might surprise you — NOT DIGITIZING THEM.
Right now, your photographs are subject to flood, fire, and the general damage old age can cause.
Think about it – how many fires and floods have occurred either impacting you or people you know?
A college friend of mine who joins a group of us who “reunion” every year (yes, reunion can be a verb in my world) lives in the Houston area. I did a digital scrapbook of some of our trips and she told me she keeps it in the top of her closet upstairs because they have flooded twice during Hurricane seasons. She has learned the loss of photos and treasures to flooding.
Of course, in Colorado we don’t need to look any further than the Marshall fires (believed to have been started by damaged power lines and high winds) near Boulder just a few years ago. It destroyed an estimated 500 homes in the city of Superior. In a heartbeat. Yes, destroyed – that means no photos/negatives/family treasures were recoverable.
And a friend of mine who went on genealogy trips to the Family History Library with me and others had done a LOT more genealogy work than I had. She lived in Black Forest when the Black Forest fire threatened and burned many homes in the area – she had her two cars packed with all her genealogy records in boxes along with photos and other precious items. Her husband could not get home from Colorado Springs so she could only drive one car out when the police were at her door telling her she had to go.
By the grace of God, the fire came to the very edge of their property and then the wind shifted and went another direction. They were some of the lucky ones – others did not fare so well.
So, what is the problem? Most of us are RE-active, not PRO-active.
As Benjamin Franklin said, “If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail”. That’s part of our “put it off because it isn’t threatening me at the moment” thinking.
Many places talk about strategies to use, like backing up in the cloud – great, but not if you have to keep up a subscription. And those free cloud places like Google Drive have limited storage and are not dependably going to be there for you during your lifetime, even.
Hard drive backups, memory cards, etc. are as susceptible to the elements as photos and traditional albums.
The fact of the matter is that your memories aren’t TRULY protected unless you get them digitized (and even then, you need a cloud storage solution to preserve them for generations).
I loved the blog written by one of the creative digital art persons at FOREVER – Roxanne Buchholz. She talked about after years of writing and creating beautiful family history books with the art she developed, there was still one project she had not conquered – her mother inherited all the letters that her parents had written during World War II. They were locked away in a safe, but it would be a huge undertaking. They were very fragile.
She finally, with the help of the FOREVER digitization team who delicately handled and scanned every precious memory, was able to relive history. Portions of her grandparents’ lives that she had never known came alive for her. As she said it “now for the first time ever, I truly understood them.”
She thought about the fact those letters had traveled between the Aleutian Islands where her grandfather was stationed; Bellingham, Washington where her grandmother lived; and Niagara Falls, New York where her great-grandparents lived between 1942-1945.
It is a great story – you can read the full blog with quotes from the letters here: (4) Reliving History, One Letter at a Time | FOREVER Yours
As Roxanne put it, she hopes her grandparents, as well as her future generations, are pleased with the work she is doing with the help of FOREVER. She is proud of her ancestors and the difficult times that shaped them into who they were and values that they have instilled in her.
So you know what I am going to ask you – have you digitized all your precious memories, photos and genealogy materials? And are they stored in the only permanent cloud storage solution which preserves them for generations? If not, why not?
Luckily, FOREVER can help in both of those categories. You can digitize your memories and have them stored for your life plus 100 years. You own, not rent, that space and they take care of migrating your memories to the current format necessary – all while sharing them with generations to come.
Oh yes, I am preaching to myself as well! I have started, but not finished, my work on this. So, if you would like some help in this field, or just want to know more, hit reply and we can connect.
Let’s DO THIS planning NOW – ok?
