Does Anyone Else Worry About Losing Photos?

Once upon a time a friend of mine travelled in France and took many, many precious photos of her time there. She was researching a book at the time and so the photos, as well as being souvenirs, were valuable in other ways too.

She returned home, jetlagged but happy, and her digital photos were promptly downloaded onto her computer. The very next day her home was broken into and dastardly thieves made off with her computer.

*POOF!* The photos were gone forever. No discs or copies had been made.

When she related this story, even though it was some years after it happened, my heart gave a tragic lurch for her loss.

Oh, photos are so precious to me! I am probably the most camera-happy person you're ever likely to meet that is not actually a photographer by trade.

But I've been realizing I haven't been as careful as I should have been with some of my photos. Although I copy my travel photos onto disc right away, my day to day pictures are not always backed up, and recent computer problems have underlined the possibility that I could easily lose some before I get around to sharing them.

I'm just so glad I made physical copies of some of my favourites (or emailed them or put them on my blog) because it seems they have gone *POOF* on me. One was from a night at the Crow & Gate Pub two years ago and I'm just thanking my stars that all my friends have a copy besides the one hanging on the inside door of my kitchen cupboards.

(That's the best place to have photos if not actually on your wall...in your cupboards. You open the door to grab some cereal and there are your favourite people smiling at you.)

Anyway, I was talking to Kim today about taking so many photos and forgetting to share the ones that don't always make it to the relevant blog posts. Time passes and I say to myself: 'oh, I already wrote about that event', or 'that happened two months ago so everybody already knows about that' and I don't get around to showing the pictures to anybody.

They are lost in my computer's picture file vortex forever.

So, my long-winded point here is that I want to share these pictures (and others I'll be posting soon in random re-cap posts) so that all my dear friends who care to have some of them can right-click and nab themselves a copy.

Then when Spider Girl's computer goes bye bye next time, she won't work herself into such a froth. :)