I know that I'm guilty & if it has happened to me, a professional photographer for over 20 years, it has likely happened to you. What am I talking about? We are talking about the poor condition in which my personal photographs have been stored. You have heard the old story of how the barbers' son always needs a haircut? Well, while we meticulously file and catalog our clients images, my personal photos, are in need of a serious haircut.
Funny isn't it something that means so much to us is so easily filed away and forgotten. Ok, forgotten might be too strong of a word, they are however out of sight and really out of mind. Then one day something happens. Maybe you move to a new house and the one box with all your photos doesn't make it. Maybe you live in Hawaii and store your pictures in one of those plastic covered albums. As moist air gets trapped between the plastic and the picture, mold begins to grow, literally destroying your photo.
When asked what people miss the most after loosing everything in a fire or a natural disaster like hurricane Katrina, the answer is always “Our pictures". If your photos have such a high value why then aren't we protecting them better? We asked ourselves this question generally when it is too late. To avoid this problem we went in search of a way to not only protect our precious memories but to preserve them without loosing their original quality.
The first and most obvious choice would be to digitize your images, put them on a CD or DVD for safe keeping. The problem is that if you do that, you are still vulnerable to un-foreseen events that may occur if they are stored in your home like a flood, fire or natural disaster. Additionally the manufacturers of writable CD's acknowledge that the shelf life of their discs is about 3 years. There is only one kind of disc that is the exception to this rule. They are discs that are manufactured with a 14k gold recording layer. You can purchase these discs for about $3.00 ea. online from e-Film or other distributors. Because the recording layer is made from gold, a corrosion resistant metal, they are said to have a shelf life of nearly 300 years.
This brings us closer to permanent storage but where should we store the discs? If you store them in your house you have the same problem you do with the pictures you are safeguarding. They are vulnerable to catastrophe. There must be something better. Well there is. You can store your images digitally off site. The cool part is you can do it in a full resolution format allowing you to make prints of substantial size depending on your original file size. Online companies like Snapfish, Shutterfly, Sony, & Photobucket will all allow you to store images. Some require small image files others charge you to store your images. All of them are fine services but they fall short in one area or another of meeting our needs. We want full resolution storage and we want it cheap.
Then we actually had a company that offers this very service presented to us. They allow each user to store up to 5GB of images on a FREE password protected website in their full resolution format for as long as you want. Additionally they offer a photo storage service that is backed up on magnetic tape and stored in the mountains of Utah. COOL !!! We had found our permanent storage for our images. The price was right and we could store any number of pictures literally forever. As a professional photographer it was really a no brainer. We became a portal for our customers offering them permanent storage of their images. Not just the ones we have taken for them but their own as well.
Additionally like the other online services, you can get your first 15 prints free and even make more prints and specialty items from your images right through the website at really great prices. The company offers everything including wallet photos, huge wall prints, puzzles, coffee mugs, shirts and even an online drag and drop system for creating a video slideshow set to music of your images. The cost is phenomenal and the slideshow you created is sent to you on DVD. With the free membership, it is a great place to catalog print and share your images. So just how many images can you get on your FREE site? Well it depends on the final resolution of your images but as a rule of thumb, let's say you are using a 6 mega pixel camera and storing the jpg images you have done at 2mb ea. You will be able to store about 2500 images in their full resolution format. Most folks will find that to be more than adequate. However, if you find you need more than 5GB of web space you can purchase more from the company.
We have found that many customers are referring this service to their friends and family members. Personally, I have an account and so do each of my immediate family members allowing us 5GB of online storage for each person. So how can you get an account of your own? Well follow the link www.hawaiianpix.myphotomax.com and just click on the sign up now button & start saving your photographs forever. - Aloha
