Your wedding photos are possibly the most significant element of the entire celebration because they are a way to remember your wedding and share memories with your children and grandchildren years after the big day. I know ours were. (Photo featured above is from our wedding! thank you Camille!)
Unfortunately, it can be every couple’s worst nightmare to lose or destroy their wedding photos. Especially with digital formats and devices evolving so quickly (or even becoming outdated), it’s simpler than ever to lose or damage your pictures by accident. But, luckily you can secure your images and offer yourself peace of mind by planning ahead and being cautious.
ElephantDrive’s Easy Guide To Protecting Irreplaceable Wedding Photos
Okay, let’s get an essential tip out of the way before we get into the best digital storage for wedding photos. Our number one tip for protecting your photos is hiring a photographer with a clear plan for preventing data loss. You wouldn’t even believe how many horror stories we’ve heard about wedding photos getting destroyed or erased.
Of course, it’s easier than ever to accidentally delete precious images in our modern tech-filled society , and once they’re gone, they’re gone. So here are some things to look for when hiring your wedding photographer. These tips will help you protect your photos before receiving them.
- They should use multiple cameras in case one’s device or memory card is corrupt.
- They should be able to explain how they download and manage photos
- Make sure they are using digital Cloud storage and physical hard drives.
Knowing these tips in advance will help you select the best wedding photographer . But, your wedding photographer will share your pictures with you, so you will also need a plan of action to keep them safe while they are in your possession.
The Secrets to Keeping Digital Wedding Photos Safe for a Lifetime
We remember the days of taking photos, getting them printed, creating photo albums, and storing them in a drawer or closet only to take them out when you wanted to reminisce. But today, we hardly ever see printed photos anymore. Instead, everything lives on our phones and computers, which may make you feel safe because they’ll always be with you.
Unfortunately, in the digital world, things could happen that can cause your precious wedding photos to get ruined or deleted. For example, your phone or laptop could get water damaged, you could accidentally delete images, your phone could be lost or stolen, and it could get attacked by a virus— all causing your photos to get lost.
To protect your wedding photos, you must store them in a protected and secure digital storage space – ElephantDrive’s cloud Storage.
Essential Things To Know About Storing Your Wedding Photos
When working with your wedding photographer, you will discuss how you want to receive your finished photos. For example, if you choose not to receive a traditional wedding photo album, the photographer might provide your photos via a USB drive or disk drive.
Is A USB Drive A Safe Place To Store My Wedding Photos?
The answer is: No! Wedding photographers might use a USB drive to give you access to your photos because the files too large and cannot be emailed; so a USB drive is a great way to get them in your hands.
The biggest reason you shouldn’t store your wedding photos on a USB drive long-term is that the USB drive can easily get corrupted, thus ruining all your photos.
So, What’s The Best Way To Store Your Wedding Photos?
Backup, backup, backup! The best strategy is to make multiple backups of your wedding photos. Never rely on a single method of image storage. Why? To begin with, technology evolves at a rapid rate. Not long ago, before the evolution of “wedding photography” as a career, photographers were merely people who enjoyed photography. They were generally friends or family members who volunteered to take photos of your special day.
This was long before we had access to sophisticated photo storage systems. Photographers snapped images of family, friends, and the places they visited hundreds of thousands of times. They utilized blank CDs and later DVDs to back up the photos. But, today, we don’t even have disk drives on the laptops we use in modern times anymore. And, in ten years, this technology will almost certainly be obsolete. The same thing will eventually happen to USB memory sticks, external hard drives, and other similar devices.
We want you and your family to be able to enjoy your wedding photos for years to come, so make sure to save them on several devices and be prepared to move your pictures to new formats as technology advances. You should not approach your wedding photos with a “store them” and “forget them” attitude. Over the years, you will have to change your storage method as technology evolves.
Local Storage
Of course, a copy of your wedding photos should always be saved on the devices you use the most: your mobile phone, iPad, or laptop. Storing them on your local devices make them easily accessible to you. In addition, it’s a great way to have your wedding images at your fingertips for viewing and sharing.
Off-Site Storage
A copy of your wedding images on a family member’s computer or an external hard drive maintained at your parents’ house could suffice as off-site storage for personal use. It’s just another place that you can use to store your photos for safekeeping. So why would having your photos stored at a friend’s or family member’s home be a good idea?
No one wants to think that a catastrophe could happen, but sometimes they do. We have heard numerous stories about fire, hurricanes, tornadoes, or other devastating events destroying families’ lifelong possessions. We don’t want that to happen to you.
The way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to save them at another location and save them on the Cloud with ElephantDrive. Oh! And also, make sure to back the photos up regularly, which can also be done using ElephantDrive.
Purchase A Wedding Album
Our parents’ wedding album is still in their possession, and yours is probably also. So one of the most acceptable ways to keep all of the best memories from your wedding day is to create a wedding album. A high-quality wedding album will last for centuries and be passed down to your family. And it’s always fun to break out the coffee table wedding album to share your memories with family and friends.
Online Cloud Storage
Online Cloud Storage is definitely one of the places where you need to be storing all your precious photos, including your beloved wedding photos. But you can’t just put your photos there and forget about them. You have to do regular backups because, let’s face it… stuff happens. And when it comes to your most cherished pictures, your wedding photos, we suggest you back up your backups.
What is Cloud NAS Storage?
Cloud NAS (network attached storage) is remote storage that can be accessed as if it were local via the Internet. A third-party service provider typically hosts the storage and charges the consumer a fee based on capacity and bandwidth. Cloud NAS Storage is perfect for preserving and safely storing your wedding photos, family photos, videos, and important documents. Cloud NAS is becoming an essential part of modern-day life.
What Is The Best Way To Store Digital Photos Long-Term?
Photos are more than just a splash of color on a piece of paper or data stored on a computer. They’re works of art documenting events in our lives. Although the prints are thin and the digital files are small, they are dense with meaning.
Storing your photos in a snap is more crucial than ever. And the best place to do that is with ElephantDrive. Unlike other cloud-based storage, ElephantDrive is focused on long-term retention. As a result, we promise your photos will never degrade or lose resolution over time (unlike the others out there) with our service. You might not know this, but with most cloud services, images and videos are compressed and can deteriorate over time; you’ll never have to worry about that with us.
Contact us today if you want the best way to store your precious photos, videos, and files!