An infographic says it’s time to start preserving those countless photos in your phone and hard drives for the future.
While digital cameras and smartphones have enabled virtually everyone to document their life through photography, the fate of many of the photos we take are often uncertain. A portion of it goes to social media, sure. A big percentage of “misses” definitely get deleted. What about the rest? How many of us even think about what to do with the ones we choose to keep?
These are just a few of the questions and insights that Mark Lord Photography wanted to explore through a detailed infographic. One thing is for sure — the need to preserve our digital memories is more relevant now, since we’ve gotten to the point where taking photos is as easy as a tap on a screen. In fact, the infographic tells us that we now take more photos every two minutes than all the photos taken during the entire 19th century!
Let’s start dissecting the facts and figures presented.
To give us a picture of just how much photos humanity is now capable of, we’re given a comparison of photos taken in 2010: 86 billion. That sounds a lot, but that’s only a tiny fraction compared to last year’s whopping 1.2 TRILLION — or 160 photos per person on the planet. Most photos today are also taken using — surprise, surprise — smartphones. The figures reveal that 85% of the photo-taking population prefer smartphones compared to the measly 10.3% of photographers who use digital cameras.
The infographic also stressed that most of the photos we take are highly personal — snaps of family and friends, special occasions, and places we visit. This means we all have very important photos most likely gathering digital dust in our computers, hard drives, memory cards, and smartphones. Even those shared on social media tend to be forgotten as time passes. Despite this, not a lot of us print our photos out. Unless we’re meticulous about safekeeping and backing up our files, all our photos are now at risk of being lost forever.
Now comes the importance of preserving these photos so these important memories will last. Data loss is always a risk. Losing a smartphone or computer to theft or technical issues can also mean losing a lifetime of memories (and even hard work, for pro photographers). To solve this, the infographic suggests going old school and print out those precious pictures, keeping multiple backups on the cloud and other drives, scheduling photoshoots for special occasions (and getting beautiful prints of the photos), and making sure that other members of the family have access to these important files.
What about you, how do you safeguard your precious photos for the future?
Infographic used with permission from Mark Lord Photography