Are Your Family Photos Safe from Disaster?

Learn How to Keep Your Family Photos Safe from Disaster

Are your precious family photos safe? Don't let disaster take them from you.

On Saturday, September 27th, take advantage of the FREE online Save Your Photos Day class, courtesy of BePhotoWise.com, a founding Save Your Photos Alliance member. Sign up now.

Visit saveyourphotos.org to discover events going on in your area and resources to help you be prepared.

Are Your Family Photos Safe? Mine Weren't.

Whether they're in digital or printed form, your photos could be lost if disaster strikes. This is an issue dear to my heart since I lost most of my childhood photos in an apartment building fire over 40 years ago.

Now I do my best to secure my photos and to digitize all the heritage photos that have been handed down. I back up digital images to Dropbox. But I have to admit that the paper photos are still at risk. There never seems to be time to deal with the boxes and boxes of heirloom photos.

Reminders like Save Your Photos Day encourage me to get out a box or two and just start scanning.

Another Way to Keep Family Photos Safe: Share Them

Social media sites like Facebook are great places to disseminate your portion of family photos throughout the family. Think of how often you see comments like, "I never even saw that one!" coming from siblings who grew up together.

Social media is a good way to pass family photos from generation to generation as well. A niece recently asked me if I had more photos of her mom, my older sister who died almost 12 years ago.

I've set up a heritage album on my Facebook page. It only has 11 photos so far, but I promised my niece I would add more as soon as possible.

I'll add this one to the album today. It's the only big family reunion I recall from childhood. The three Bergen boys weren't born yet. My younger sister is just a baby in Mother's arms. I'm three and standing a bit behind my five-year old sister. We're the two blondies on the right in matching dresses sewn by Mother.

I'll be making more family photos safe tomorrow. I've signed up for the BePhotoWise webinar and plan to scan while I listen for new tips and ideas to keep family photos safe.