Protect irreplaceable photos
As we enter hurricane season here in the Lowcountry, many families begin thinking about storm shutters, evacuation routes, generators and emergency supplies. However, one category is often overlooked until it is too late: family photos and home videos.
Unlike furniture or electronics, these memories cannot simply be reordered or replaced after a storm. Photographs are especially vulnerable to water, humidity and mold. Once prints become saturated or album pages fuse together, recovery becomes difficult and expensive.
Digital memories are not immune, either. Phones can be lost, computers damaged and external hard drives destroyed by flooding or power surges. Many people assume their photos are “somewhere safe,” only to discover after a disaster that they were never fully backed up.
The good news is that protecting your memories does not have to be overwhelming. Start with the irreplaceable items first: wedding photos, older family pictures, handwritten letters, slides, negatives and home movies. These are often the only copies that exist.
Then have them digitized to make a backup copy. Digitizing also allows for color restoration and makes it easier to share these precious family heirlooms. To protect the physical media, place it in waterproof containers and move it to higher shelves during storm season. A few small protective steps can make a major difference.
For digital photos, think in terms of layers of protection. One copy is not enough. A simple backup strategy includes keeping photos on your device, backing them up to an external hard drive and using a trusted cloud service as an additional safeguard. This is often called the “3-2-1 rule.” Three copies on two different types of storage, with one copy stored off-site.
My recommended backup service is Backblaze. It has protected my personal photo and file collection for years and has helped me successfully recover important files on more than one occasion.
Today, many people rely on Apple Photos, Google Photos or cloud services and assume their memories are protected. But before smartphones, most of us captured photos on digital cameras and stored them on memory cards, CDs, DVDs, flash drives, external hard drives and old computers. Those forgotten formats are often the most vulnerable during hurricane season because water, humidity and power surges can permanently damage them.
A simple strategy is to gather older media into one place, determine what is still accessible and prioritize transferring your most meaningful memories into a well-organized, backed-up system using both local and cloud storage.
Hurricane season is also a good reminder to identify and organize your photos before an emergency happens. A collection filled with unnamed faces and unlabeled folders becomes much harder for future generations to understand. Take a few minutes to label important people, events and dates while the information is still fresh. Technology can help store your photos, but only you can preserve the story behind them.
I often tell families that photo preservation is not really about protecting paper or files. It is about protecting connection, history and the moments that define a family. This hurricane season, along with batteries and bottled water, consider adding your memories to the list of things worth protecting.
Rhoda Gordon, a local Certified Photo Manager, is the owner of Sunflower Photo Solutions and the creator of DIG YOUR PHOTOS!™,. For a decade, she has been helping families and businesses sort, organize, digitize, and back up their print and digital photo collections. Discover more tips, tricks, and howtos on her YouTube channel: youtube.com/@digyourphoto.
