For her 30th birthday, while she was still pregnant, Lindsay Nie received from Mom an album filled with her baby and childhood photos.
She enjoyed the trip down memory lane — recalling, for instance, the wooden slide she had in her room and the way she used to play on it. But she also noticed many gaps in the collection, in some cases months or even a year in length.
So after Nie gave birth to Amber in December, she was determined to leave a better record, a daily diary through imagery. She slips her Canon PowerShot SD450 digital camera into a diaper bag anywhere she goes and has snapped more than 6,500 photos in nine months.
“I grab it all the time, if she’s just doing something really cute, maybe playing with a toy or grabbing a shoe in a shoe store,” Nie said. “I don’t really delete any. Years from now, I want to remember the bad face she made” — not just the smiles.
Thanks to cheap and easy-to-use recording devices — digital cameras, camcorders, camera phones — today’s kids are forming the most documented generation ever, as parents, relatives and friends capture forever the first, second and hundredth smile.
The challenge will come in managing all the data and making sure they get migrated and cared for along the way.
“With digital you can just keep on taking to get the one you want,” said Amy Short, a nurse in East Alton, Ill. “I definitely take a lot more of my son of just everyday, laying around or sleeping or just little things.”
But all this documentation may carry a price if parents, in spending so much energy creating and preserving a digital archive, fail to enjoy living the moment.
What if disk drives fail or software formats change, rendering photos unreadable by tomorrow’s computers? Will CDs even work?
Jennifer Lucas, of Frankfort, Ill., makes prints of the best photos and keeps them in a traditional album. She keeps the rest by month on CDs.
“Looking back at what my parents have of me, there might be 20 to 30 pictures from my entire first year,” Lucas said. With Jack, born four months ago, “we already have hundreds documenting everything he’s already done. Chances are those discs are never going to be looked at again when he gets older, but they will be there in case.”
– – –
Keep your memories safe
Just because you’ve taken thousands of digital photos of your kids doesn’t mean they’ll ever get to see them when they become parents themselves. Hard drives can corrupt. CDs scratch. Photo-storage sites can go bankrupt. And formats change.
But there are several steps you can take to avoid a digital disaster and keep the memories alive.
Manage your CDs and DVDs
Don’t rely solely on discs. A scratch might kill the image of your baby’s first walk. Make multiple copies, and migrate data to a new set of discs every few years. Be aware that computers decades from now might not even have drives for reading CDs and DVDs.
Keep backups at multiple locations
Keep copies on an external drive, CDs or DVDs in case your computer’s primary disk drive fails. Consider an online backup service in case a tornado, fire or other disaster hits your home.
Know limitations of online storage
Don’t rely solely on any one service as a site may disappear without warning. Keep in mind that a photo-sharing service isn’t the same as online backup. Many free ones restrict access to the original, high-resolution version of photos needed for quality prints.
Migrate your data
As you change computers, bring files to your new machine right away — before the old one breaks down.
