"From the beginning of photography in the early 1800s, until the end of 2013, approximately 3.8 trillion photos have been taken. In 2014 we will take about 1 trillion photos. 20% of all photos over the last 200 years will be taken this year. WOW!"  ~David Neo Eggert, owner of Neo Pro Imaging located in Cleveland, OH  (The total taken is an average reported by Kodak/Canon/Nikon the 1 trillion is an estimate by yahoo.)  

David posted this the other day on his Facebook page.  He made a really interesting point that got me thinking...

Out of 1 trillion photos taken, how many do you suppose will be printed?

Technology & digital photography has completely evolved how we display our photographs.  Instead of taking tangible 4x6 photographs and putting them in an album to showcase and preserve our most sacred moments we now store them on digital devices; such as, our phones, DVD's, our computers/tablets and so on... then we share them via Facebook, email, Instagram, Twitter, etc...

I guess this raises the question... How do we leave them to our children?  

Now there are a lot of tech savvy people out there that I'm sure have an answer and solution for this...  Some people are opening up cloud storage and saving all their images that way.  Some people are setting up a family email and sending & saving all their photos to it.  And some are just storing them on social websites like Facebook, Google+, etc...  

What happens when the people you want to leave these heirloom memories to cannot access them because they simply do not have your password?  Or what happens when that computer, server or phone crashes?  Do you have a back-up plan if your digital solution fails you?

For the studio and for my personal photos, I take photo back-up very seriously.  I have a network drive that simultaneously backs up onto another drive, which is then backed up into a cloud.  The drives are set-up to notify me by email if something isn't working properly and I check the cloud on a pretty much daily basis.  This is about as secure of a set-up that you can get.  BUT, there is always a but - I don't feel that this is good enough.  As a mother, I think about things like, what if my babies as adults can't for access them for some reason?  What if all there memories are on drives 20 years from now are obsolete?

When DVD's first came out they said they would last 100 years.  A few years later, they are breaking down and not holding up like they were meant to.  Try watching an old DVD in your player, doesn't play very well does it?  Photos stored on DVD's are the same.  USB drives have replaced DVD's , but what happens when those don't live up to their expectations?

There are a lot of ways to store your digital photos and keep them secure, but if you want to show them off for many, many years... If you want your children to sit down with their children and relive their lives... No amount of cloud storage will ever replace a tangible product you can hold in your hands.  PRINT your photos and PRINT more photos! 

Below is a photo taken of my kids last fall.  I have this beautifully enlarged to 28x 22 (without the logo) in our family room.  I treasure them so much and walking into our home everyday seeing this on my wall brings me a lot of joy.  I know this is a print they will hold on to and treasure for many, many years :-)