You sit down to turn on the computer to turn it on and nothing happens, or you get some crazy looking screen that you have never seen before.  Your heart sinks, the computer has crashed…….along with everything on it — including all of your family pictures. What now? Well, it is amazing what can be recovered from hard drives these days, but it does come at a cost. In this post, I am going to talk about different ways you can back up your photos so that, hopefully, if your computer crashes in the future, it will be more of an inconvenience rather than a devastating heartbreak.

Keep in mind, there are many different ways you can back up your photos. What I discuss here will definitely not be an all inclusive list of back up methods, but it will give you a good start.

Methods to back up

External Hard Drive-
For this method you purchase an external hard drive that is either portable or not. The difference between the two is a portable hard drive plugs into your via a USB cord only. A non-portable one also requires an electrical outlet to power the drive. You have to decide which one will be best for you depending on your needs and your budget. The sizes of these drives also keep getting bigger and bigger. I recommend buying the size with the largest storage capacity that will fit in your budget. It is amazing how many family photos we can collect over the years.

Some of the external hard drives come with software to automatically schedule your back ups. If you have one that doesn’t, that’s okay, you can use your computer’s automatic back up system and use the external hard drive for the back up location.

Cloud Back Up-
This is becoming popular and there are many options available. In this method you upload your photos to a server and the photos will stay there forever, well at least as long as the company is business. There are many different plans and companies to choose from. Some are free and some cost some money. With this method, you could potentially have access to your photos from anywhere you have an internet connection. If you use the free GMail, your account comes with 15GB of space to use for your backups. This is a good start, however, for many people who take a lot of photos that space will run out quickly. Other provider options are Carbonite, BackBlaze, & Mozy. These are but just a very few options of several available for online back up. Some have options to back up not only your computer, but also an external hard drive attached to your computer. So you could have a double back up if you back up to your external hard drive, and also online. It’s always good to have more than one back up if you can.

USB Drive or Disc Storage- With this method you can simply copy and paste files from one location to your USB flash drive or disc storage. This is certainly better than nothing. However keep in mind, with this method, you will have to manually add the new files to your back up method. And these devices tend to have much smaller storage capacity than an external hard drive or certainly the cloud. So you could end up with several discs or USB drives with your files spread out among them.

Again, this is better than nothing, but it is a little more time consuming as it requires manual work on your part of remembering to copy over the files. Also keep in mind, technology is ever evolving. Some newer computers do not come with disc drives. And remember that old floppy disc? Most computers these days have no way to read them. So you may have to transfer your files to newer technology so that you can always access it in the future.

Timing of the Back Up

I recommend having your back up happen automatically if possible. You can set it back up when you don’t expect anyone to be using the computer, such as the middle of the night.

How often to back up depends on your usage and how much you are willing to risk to lose. Some back up weekly, some daily, but that will be a personal decision based on your needs.

Conclusion-

No matter how you back up your photos, I recommend you pick one and use it. You never know when you just might need a copy of those precious family photos and cannot access them from your computer for whatever reason.

I firmly believe you should take a lot of everyday photos of your family in “real life.” Professional portraits are valuable, but those “everyday” photos can really bring back some memories you and your family have made. Some of these photos though might have some issues that may detract from your overall enjoyment of them later.  You me be thinking, “Wow, I wish I could see his face better, or I wish he wasn’t so blurry.” So I am going to incorporate a category of Photo Tips to share with you. These will help you take some better snapshots of you family.

This tip is about “getting in close.” This will help your photos go from “So-so” to “Love it!” in no time. When taking photos, we tend to include a lot of background that is distracting from the focal point of the photo- the child.This especially can happen when we are hurriedly snapping photos just “trying to get the shot.” Believe me, I know how fast these kiddos can move around. They could tire even the most trained sprint runner!

To correct this, we have two options.

1. Get in closer while taking the photo.
2. Crop the photo in our photo editing software afterwards.

Get in Closer While Taking the Photo
To do this, you can use your zoom on your camera. The amount of zoom will vary depending on you camera. Some cameras can zoom up to 3x while others can zoom up to 20x or more on a point and shoot type of camera. If you are using a DSLR, the amount of zoom available to you will depend on the lens you have attached to your camera body. Many entry level DSLR’s come with a kit lens that is 18mm-55mm which equates to about a 3x zoom.

If you find that your zoom range isn’t enough for your photo, you will have to “zoom with your feet.” This means physically getting closer to your child (or photo subject). II realize that sometimes this is not possible though. Our child may be involved in an activity and if we get closer, we will distract them and lose the moment. If it comes to that, go ahead and take the photo. Better to have this photo than no photo at all. You can use option 2 to get in closer.

Crop the Photo with Photo-Editing Software
Most cameras these days come with at least a very basic photo editing software. If yours did not, there are all kids of editing software available online or at low cost. My personal choice of software is Photoshop. There are two versions available, the full version and Elements. I use the full version, but Photoshop Elements is aimed toward consumers and is very affordable when compared to the cost of the full version. And it probably has most of the features you will ever need for everyday photo editing.

Other photo editing options are Picasa, PicMonkey, or GIMP. GIMP is layer based photo editing program, similar to Photoshop in ways, but completely free. Just do a google search for “free photo editing software” and you will see tons of choices.

Open your software and then open your photo. You can use the crop tool in your software to get in close on the image to make it more interesting and bring the focus in to your subject.

In the example below,  I took a photo of my daughter in my driveway as the sun was setting. I noticed her holding her dress up to her face and I thought it was so touching. So I did what most people do, I quickly snapped a picture. Not really paying attention to the background. However, I also captured part of my husband. While I dearly love my husband, I did not necessarily want him in the photo. (Poor guy!) And it was hard to really see the expression on my daughter’s face.

Cute photo of my daughter. But it also includes my husband and I can’t really see her expression.

Once I cropped the photo in Photoshop, I was able to get in close, get rid of the background distractions and really see the expression I wanted to capture.

This is much better. The photo includes only my daughter and I can now see her expression much better.

The second photo looks much better and evokes more emotion. In short, it is much more compelling. So give this easy tip a try to love your photos more. Just get in close, whether in camera while you are taking the photo or afterwards in photo editing software.

Keep taking those photos and capturing those memories! 🙂