{Plus, How I How I Store and Backup All My Files}

It’s clearly safe to say that our lives these days are fully immersed in all things digital. It’s in every thing that we do, from our social lives all the way down to turning the lights off. My husband, Joe, has our whole house rigged to where I can run just about everything through an app or voice command…except laundry. Where’s the app that does laundry for me? Alexa, can you help a girl out?

Because technology has made daily tasks so convenient, for several years I’ve also seen a growing trend of clients asking for JUST digital images from their sessions, no prints and certainly no books. And though their reasoning is completely valid (and I totally relate), I also think prints and books are just as important or MORE important than the files. I’m here to tell 6 important reasons you should always print your images.

1. Digital is Far From Perfect: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a USB drive, CD or SD card from my cellphone randomly become corrupt, or a hard drive fail on me. Everything lost. Gone! Never to be seen again. And though I am constantly striving to find the best quality products for my clients, digital is not 100% perfect and there have been times when I needed to reformat USB drives for clients. This is where backing up is essential! I’ll get more into that at the bottom of this post. But imagine if you had printed those images that mysteriously became corrupt. What a relief to still be able to view them! They are not gone forever!
2. Digital Storage is Constantly Changing: Surprise!!! Technology is constantly changing? No!! (Can you feel the sarcasm there?) This is going to age me a little but when I was in grade school the main external device for digital file storage was a floppy disk. In high school it was a CD. And now USB drives are the go-to. But with the growth and popularity of cloud services, I think in the near future the need for USB drives in the photography industry will quickly dwindle just like the later two. With technology regularly changing, it creates the need to consistently update your files to the latest storage device in order to be able to access those files. But life is busy! I’ll be the first to admit that. And we forget. And 10 years later when you want to look back at your wedding images from the USB you received, there may not be a port to plug in to. But you could be thankful you have that wedding album to flip through!
3. View Your Images NOT on a Screen: The mobile world has created viewing files at our fingertips 24/7 but how often do we actually take the time to scroll through and really look at our images? Probably not often. Our lives have been so consumed with screen time that it’s become an addiction for some. What another great reason to pull back, become unplugged for a little and flip through a book to admire your images. Give your eyes a little rest from that blue light. Take the time to MAIL a wallet image to close family and friends. Sure it’s easy to share to the masses on social media, I do this all the time, but news feeds only last MAYBE 24 hours and then your content is lost somewhere in social media land never to be seen again. How incredibly thoughtful would it be if you gifted them a permanent way to view your favorite image? In this day and age it would be profound.
4. Look at Your Images Daily: I have prints hanging all over our house (of course) not only of my children and our little family, but also our extended family and even their wedding images. I love walking through the hall or down the stairs every day and taking a quick glimpse of them. A little reminder of what their faces look like and how beautiful they are, especially the ones that live far away. And the best part is that it takes virtually no time. I didn’t have to pull out my phone and scroll for minutes to find a photo and I didn’t have to dig out a USB drive and plug it into the computer to shuffle through the images. An added bonus: our children LOVE to pull out the books I’ve made and look back at their baby pictures!
5. Future Generations: I’m very intrigued by my family’s history and lucky for me, one of my grandma’s biggest hobby is genealogy. She has extensive records on many of our past family members. Within those records are several pictures but in some files there are only negatives with no prints to be found. These days it’s tough to print from old negatives. It’s time consuming and costly. It’s a bit of a bummer not being able to look at those images and see what my family lived like in the past. Imagine your future family members being able to look back and admire your life and your story all while being able to put a face to it. If not for you, at least for your future generations.
6. Remember the Memories: This is embarrassing to admit but I did not print a single image of my daughter from 18 months to almost 4 years old! I totally cringe saying that! I know! I know what you’re thinking, “Carissa, why aren’t you practicing what you preach?” I just have one word…life. But that’s a terrible excuse! I just didn’t make it a priority in my life at that time and I honestly don’t know why. But when I finally decided to catch up with my own personal images I realized that I completely forgot what she was like during that time. Liella grew and changed so quickly that I forgot how she smiled, how she stood, how her hair was, I even forgot some parts of her quirky personality. All of those memories instantly came flooding back to me. As a mama this made me extremely sad and furious at myself that I let those memories slip away like that. I may be a photographer but I do not have a photographic memory. I can’t remember every single detail of every single aspect of life. And perhaps that’s why I love photography so much. Because I can preserve those memories forever. And now, I never want to miss printing an image because I want to constantly relive those memories.

As a professional photographer, I feel like I am doing a complete disservice to my clients if I don’t offer prints or albums. Not being able to give you the choice or opportunity to PHYSICALLY hold on to your precious memories would go against everything I believe in when it comes to photography. I want those moments to be a daily reminder of how wonderful that time in your life was. I want you to have good quality prints that have correct color and contrast and will literally last a lifetime, because you deserve it! But in an ever-changing digital age, I completely understand the importance and necessity of having digital files. And it’s extremely important to have a good storage and backup system for those files.

Bonus! How I Store & Backup All of My Image Files

You’re probably going to think I’m crazy with all the steps I take to backup not only my professional images but also personal images from cellphones. Joe and I go to the extreme when saving our images and to some it might seem overkill. To me it’s just extra precaution. And I suppose it just makes sense being a photographer and Joe being in IT. I’m going to highlight what we do. Feel free to implement a system that works best for you!

Cellphone Images: All of our cellphone images are automatically backed up to two different cloud services iCloud and Dropbox. We chose these two because they are reliable and easy to use since we both have iPhones. I believe Google Sync is a comparable option for Android users. With the growing trend of large company’s databases being compromised, we utilize two cloud services in the event that one may fall under some day. We also copy all these images to an external hard drive once a year and place it in our fire safe. And of course I have each year printed in books called Behounek Family Adventures 2019 through Chatbooks.

Professional Images: All of my professional images are saved to a RAID hard drive. This hard drive automatically makes a copy to a second hard drive in case the first fails. After a year, I move the images to an external hard drive. I also use Dropbox and Adobe Creative Cloud as cloud services for these images. My clients can rest assure that their images are safe and thoroughly backed up for at least one year after their session. For myself, I print high quality images to hang in my home as well as yearly professional albums of each of my children.

Once you receive any digital images from CB Studio, I highly recommend making a copy immediately. Whether it be to a computer, cloud service, external hard drive or another USB drive. This way you always have a backup. And lastly, I most certainly recommend printing your images either through myself or a retail printing service that offers archival, high quality products. It’s good to know that while some retail printing services prices seem enticing, they most likely use non-archival printing techniques and will not last through the years.

Much Love,
Carissa