of caution, so I use a few different tools
to ensure my images are safe. Much of
the process is automated and doesn’t re-
quire any interaction on your part.
RAISING DIGITAL KIDS
— by Mike Daugherty
Saving & Organizing Your Photos
C
apturing the moments in
our children’s lives is much
different than it was for our
parents. If you’re like me, you take pic-
tures of your family almost exclusively
with your smartphone. Previous genera-
tions did not have the luxury of a por-
table, high definition, always in your
pocket camera. Someone had to remem-
ber to bring a camera, load the film, and
ensure they took the best picture possi-
ble on the first try. Now, parents snap ten
photos in a row without thinking twice
about it.
Smartphones burst onto the scene
over a decade ago, and the number of
digital images captured each year has
increased at a staggering pace. It is esti-
mated that 1.5 trillion photos will be tak-
en in 2019. By comparison, 3.5 trillion
photos were taken between 1826 when
photography was invented through the
year 2012.
Saving and storing those 1.5 tril-
lion photos presents a problem for mod-
ern parents. How do you save these
memories for future generations to see?
Growing up, my mom would keep photo
albums that she could bring out when
the time called for it. That’s a bit more
difficult when the average family takes
over 4,000 photos each year. Let’s look
at what parents can do to ensure life’s
most memorable moments end up safely
stored away in the Internet’s version of a
shoebox under your bed.
20 WNY Family August 2019
Facebook Isn’t the Answer
Merely saving your photos on your
home computer or leaving them on your
smartphone is not a smart idea. This cre-
ates a single point of failure for a lifetime
of memories. If your home computer
gets infected or your smartphone breaks
or gets stolen, you can lose years of your
digital memories in mere minutes.
I’ve talked with parents who be-
lieve uploading their photos to Face-
book is the answer. Unfortunately, this
is not a reliable option, either. Facebook
is fantastic for sharing pictures, but the
site reduces the quality of your photos
substantially during the upload process.
The original image is reduced to a web-
friendly version that cannot be resized,
enhanced, or printed. There are settings
on the site that can help with this, but
there are other factors to consider. So-
cial media sites were not developed with
long term storage in mind. Any of these
sites could decide to remove posts be-
fore a set date without much warning.
Lastly, Facebook, Instagram, and
similar sites are designed to showcase
a few photos. You don’t upload ALL of
your pictures to these services.
Look to the Cloud
Parents need a solution that allows
easy access to every photo while keep-
ing them backed up in their original, high
definition quality. I tend to err on the side
Step one in this process is choosing
a cloud storage option that works best
for your needs. Cloud storage is similar
to a giant flash drive that resides on the
Internet. The benefit of storing your pho-
tos in the cloud is that it’s not your home
computer or smartphone. You can’t ac-
cidentally drop the cloud into the pool
while you’re swimming. Clicking an
email that releases a virus onto your
home computer has little to no impact
on your data in the cloud.
Cloud services are designed in a
way that prevents accidents, malfunc-
tions, or malicious software from ruining
your files. Additionally, most services
use sophisticated backup technology to
avoid possible data loss. There are quite
a few options out there, such as Flickr,
iCloud, and Amazon Prime Photos. The
two standouts, in my opinion, are Drop-
box and Google Photos.
Google Photos offers unlimited
storage for free and includes some tech-
nology to help you organize and even
edit your photos. The free model in-
cludes a catch though. Pictures and vid-
eos above a specific size are compressed
to save space. The research I’ve done on-
line suggests that the resizing will not be
noticeable to most people and will not af-
fect many of your uploads. A free Google
photos account may be suitable for many
readers. The other standout, Dropbox,
gets my recommendation though.
Dropbox provides two terabytes in
their Pro plan for $129 per year. While
it is not the free unlimited storage of
Google, the two terabytes should be
plenty of storage for most families. Im-
ages and photos are not compressed, so
they are kept in their original quality.
The best feature of Dropbox is the apps
that come with it. There’s a smartphone
app and a desktop app. You’ll want to
download them both. The smartphone
app includes an option to upload your
photos to their site automatically. The
app will wait until you’ve connected to
wifi and send your photos to the cloud