What is your favorite photograph? Close your eyes and think hard about what it looks like. Who is in it? What is happening? Is it an event you experienced or a favorite picture from your parents’ life? Is it an achievement of your child? Is it your favorite pet? Do you have a good mental image of it?
Now.
Imagine losing that photo.
I have some distressing news. Your photos are in grave danger.
Those of us on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts know what June 1 means—the beginning of hurricane season. We’ve all seen the devastating effects of super storms that level neighborhoods and even cities. Every year we stash some gallon jugs of water, stock our cabinets with canned soup, check batteries, board up windows, and then wait, wait, wait, wait to see where the hurricanes will go. Sometimes we leave everything behind to evacuate.
Others of us face different destructive forces. Families can lose everything in an instant, like in Joplin, or Japan after the tsunami, and more recently in the tragic earthquake in Nepal. It happens literally every day in localized fires and household floods. Many have to deal with the aftermath of irreparable destruction and have nothing left. There is no amount of insurance money that will restore your lost photographs.
If you think it won’t happen to you, I’m sorry to say that the odds are not in your favor. Our photographs are extraordinarily fragile. They are damaged by heat, damp, fire, water, smoke, dirt, time, light. Do you want to gamble with your family’s heritage?
People who have lost everything in disasters are lucky to have even one meaningful photo left.
If they could go back and give themselves advice before the tragic loss of their memories, would they say that it can wait until later in the year? It’s not a priority right now? I’ll get to it eventually?
What do you think they would do to get it all back?
The total loss of precious memories is preventable. Digitizing your photos is like insurance for your irreplaceable pictures. Save your photos from destruction.
Don’t wait until it’s too late. Don’t risk your memories and your history. Digitize now.
