Will our children have any photos to remember us by?

Granted at this time I am not "officially" a parent of actual children, I am an aunt, puppy mom, wife, sister, daughter, friend and luckily and auntie to many, many adorable children.

My father recently retired after a 41 year career in education and there was a wonderful kid focused retirement party for him.  One of the things that people asked for - to make the party interesting - was old photos of him.  Someone found a photo from the first year he was a teacher - with black hair no less!  My mom brought photos of him with the "5th grade graduation classes" from his various schools.  There were newspaper clippings and magazine articles documenting all of his accomplishments - many of which were scanned and made into a slideshow that ran throughout the event.  All of these were actual prints though, some framed and others just loose for people to pick up and pass around. 

What will happen when we retire?  Will someone go through their iPhone and pass it around?  Will we all bring our computers and search through thousands of images for that one that means something?

Please don't get me wrong, I adore my smartphone, my digital cameras - all 5 of them, my flip video camera and seeing pictures online.  BUT I still value that piece of paper with an image on it.  I still print my favorite pictures and am just as excited to get them back as when we used to turn in film to be developed.  Now I am a known procrastinator - so not all of my images are in albums - many are in boxes - but I can throw 10 pictures in my bag and show off my niece's cartwheel from her recital and the funny time that one of the girls I babysit for decided a bowl containing chocolate pudding was really a hat. 

So, what do you do with the thousands of pictures in your camera phone, in your computer and on a memory card?  There are so many options that still compete with the digital age but give us something tangible to hold and pass around. 

What is the one thing that almost every disaster survivor says they will miss most?  The photographs.  The memories that can only be shared in photos.  The albums and framed family portraits that were swept away in a hurricane or distroyed by a flood. 

On one hand - if we do it right - we won't lose those precious memories in a disaster and will be able to pass them along to our children and their children.  There are ways to back up our digital images - even if the prints are lost - and for that - I am very thankful.  Problem is - are you doing that?

I admit that I will ooh and aww at the pictures on a cell phone with everyone else.  I show off the latest accomplishments on my phone to my family and friends.  Unfortunately, those are the ones we must save.

My advice - as a professional photographer and a worrier?  Download those images to your computer, label and date them, use one of the free sorting and catagorizing programs to keep your favorites, upload them to an online viewing service, back them up to an external hard drive and of course, PRINT SOME!

Believe it or not - some of the online printing services (and as a professional photographer I will probably be ridiculed for saying this) do a pretty good job of printing images for around $.10 each.  So for a dollar - I can take those 10 pictures and show them all off.

One of the best examples of what I recommend is what my friend and mother of 3 does with all of her thousand of pictures.

First, she puts them on iphoto and sorts them by month and occasion.  Then the best get uploaded to one of the online services such as snapfish.com or shutterfly.com.  Once an event is uploaded, or a year has gone by she makes a book or multiple books.  When the girls are grown, they will each have books of every year of their life to take with them.  Each has photos of all of the significant people in their lives at that time.  She also prints some of the images and shares with grandparents, cousins and even "aunties" like me.  If something were ever to happen to those books - she could go online and order more of them.  That way those memories aren't lost forever.

Now if I will just follow this advice for my personal images!