"Say cheese!" That's what the person behind the camera might shout when they want you to smile for a photo. 2025 marked the 50th anniversary of digital photography. Steve Sasson, inventor of the first digital camera in 1975, told the BBC that it looked like a 'toaster with a lens' – not like the stylish cameras we see today! By 2005, more people were buying digital cameras than film cameras, which meant that a process which used to be slow and laborious, was now quick and easy.
The 2000s brought a snap-happy era, with people now able to take hundreds, even thousands of photos a year. But what they hadn't quite worked out yet was how to store them. Back then, people used a mishmash of hard drives, USB sticks and CDs – physical storage that was at risk of loss or theft. Later came online photo sharing via social media or free online photo galleries where you can upload photos to 'the cloud'. The problem is that if you chose just one of these options for photo storage, such as an old laptop that's now broken, or a social media website that no longer exists, you may have what's called a 'black hole' in your photographic record, with no photos of life in the noughties. So, what's the advice?
After losing an external hard drive with all her family photos, Cathi Nelson set up The Photo Managers, a company which helps people manage their photo collections. They say the best protection is their '3-2-1' rule of photo storage which involves having three copies of each photo, all in different places. One in the cloud, the second on a hard drive, and a third on a drive in a separate location, like someone else's house. If that sounds like too much work, just make sure your smartphone automatically uploads photos to the cloud, and then spare some time once a month to upload those to a hard drive. And if you're someone who takes hundreds of photos per month, it's also a good idea to regularly curate your camera roll – keep the best ones and delete the rest, so you feel more in control.
The key takeaway here is that each storage method has its pitfalls, so it's better to always use two methods over just one in order to have a backup. Online platforms can be shut down, and hard drives can be lost. Just make sure your memories don't fade into the digital black hole.