I was once part of your ranks. I was the typical computer user. The worshiper of technology. A believer that had faith. Faith that my new digital camera would allow me to take unlimited photos of my family and surroundings and then save them permanently on my computer or CD for my grandchildren to enjoy. Now I have to be honest, I wasn't completely a blind follower. I was aware of the danger. Maybe I was too busy with my family. Too wrapped up in capturing the moments with my cool new toy. Too busy cleaning the garage, mowing the grass and paying bills to worry about it at the moment.

Sound familiar? Then my day came. The day that I learned the evil truth first hand. Technology is flawed. My computer hard drive died a sudden death and in the process ate about the first 6 months of my first sons photographic existence. My lesson was learned the hard way that technology has no brain, no expected life span, no reasoning or compassion. We all need to be on the defensive when it comes to our digital photos and effectively plan for the worst. Plan to understand the technology, plan to back-up in some reliable way, and to do it regularly.

The purpose of these articles are to save you from experiencing the same loss. Whether it be images that are essential to your work or business or essential to your family or personal artistic expression, I am going to try to help you on your way to understanding how to properly save, organize, store and archive your digital photos for future generations to view and enjoy. Now, you may have noticed that I said "try" to help you. Unfortunately we all need to come to face the fact that there is officially no perfect way to archive photography other than making a high quality print and putting it in a safety deposit box or on microfilm. Even doing so won't make your images last forever.

In addition to that, I am only speaking from personal experience, my own research, advice from fellow photographers, and general opinion and as in life nobody is perfect and there are always more than one right way to accomplish a task. So, use my advice as a guide and a starting point. Our own government still hasn't discovered the solution for storing digital history other than old fashioned microfilm. You'll have to continually keep up on technology, read a lot, review quality media companies, new solutions, possibly archiving your archives, and I will have to admit you might even find 10 years down the road that we were all wrong. But by keeping up with technology and understanding the basics provided in theses pages, you will be starting off on the right foot. Hopefully we'll make the right choices and with a little luck from the all powerful digital gods we'll safely archive our digital photos for future generations to come.

Coming up next... Part 3 - The Digital Revolution

ArchivingDigital.com