Imagine that you just got back from a vacation or perhaps a once in a lifetime family reunion. You unpack your luggage, start putting your things away, and finally get a moment to look at all of the pictures you took. You go to find your digital camera, but it isn’t where you thought it would be. Then you begin to look everywhere you can think of that it might have been put. Now your heart starts to race as you come to the realization that your digital camera is missing. Losing your digital camera isn’t the worst thing though; it is losing the memory card that contains all of your once in a lifetime pictures. It isn’t like the good old film days when your camera had only 24 pictures in it. Nope, now you’ve lost hundreds of pictures in one heartbreaking moment.
This is just one of the many ways that we have seen that result in very large amounts of digital pictures being lost forever. In one recent day, I had two customers lose over a thousand pictures for two very different reasons. One, a professional nature photographer had a corrupted card. I realize that this is not a common problem, yet it does happen, and when it does the images are usually gone forever. The other, an amatuer, just returned from a major family event, and lost his camera. If these were the only lost images this week I might not be writing this. I also had one customer who lost a card and one who accidentally formatted his card. With an image recovery program we were able to retrieve the images on the formatted card, but the others are just gone forever!
This brings me to one of the most frustrating issues with digital photography. In the good old film days a lost roll of film had 24 to 36 pictures. A typical 1GB memory card might hold 400 (or more) pictures. We sell a lot of 2GB and larger cards that can easily hold thousands of images. The number of people who have lost irreplaceable pictures since the advent of digital photography is unknown. What I do know is that the number is staggering. I have reason to believe that this issue will continue to grow. Try as we might, the forces of human nature are working against us. Why bother printing your pictures when you can show them to your friends on the back of your camera? Why bother saving your images to a CD when the card has more room on it? Why bother with backing up your hard drive when you load your pictures to your computer? Why do I need more then one memory card? After all, they never fail, do they? Why shouldn’t I just delete some pictures when my card gets full?
Having been raised in the photo industry, I was taught that the loss of any customer’s pictures, whether due to human error or machine mishap, was to be considered as the most serious event that could happen in our store. A camera could always be replaced but never a picture. Now in the digital age, it seems that the loss of hundreds of pictures is somehow looked on as just a part of the process. I do not see it that way and I am always looking for ways to prevent the loss of important pictures. Yet it seems there is always a new story of how a customer has lost pictures.
So, in an effort to encourage our customers to print their pictures more often, we have started the Photo Zone DigiClub. This club allows our customers to print as few or as many pictures as they want and still get our lowest price. Previously you needed to get over 100 4×6 prints to get the best price, but once you join the DigiClub you can stop in, make a few 4×6 prints, pay the lowest price and be on your way in just a few minutes. We want to see our customers more often, not just because we like you (which we do) but because that way you will be far less likely to have a problem with lost images. It also allows us to answer questions that may have been in the back of your mind, but you never really had the time to come in and get answered. It keeps you more in touch with what is happening in digital photography and allows us to help you to get better pictures. Again, back in the film days we would have the opportunity to see our customers’ pictures and advise them on ways to get better results. Now that we don’t see them as often, we also don’t have the chance to help them with our knowledge and free advice. I miss this aspect of our business, as it kept us in touch with our customers’ wants and needs so that we could be more of a partner in their picture taking and making.
Perhaps the most obvious thing about the printing of pictures is also the most overlooked. A print is the only thing you can see without some electronic device. It is, in reality, the only thing you have that you know is really there. All of the electronic data that you think of as digital pictures could vanish from wherever you think it is and you would not know until it was too late. An actual photograph, on the other hand, is real and you know that it won’t just vanish into the ether with so many other pieces of lost data. Prints are and should be your first and most important form of back up for your digital images. They are, after all, the only ones you can see and that you know will last generations.
I hope that you never suffer the loss of any irreplaceable pictures. I wish there were some quick and easy way for people to safely store their digital pictures without fear of loss. But, with that said, my strongest recommendation is to print your pictures shortly after you take them, then back them up onto the high quality gold CD and try not to keep too many images in any one place.
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