Photos are in Danger: Highlight 6
- Posted on February 2, 2016
- in Photo Storage Solutions
- by LK
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Albums & Attics
Most memories these days are captured and stored digitally, but many of us persist in keeping a large portion of our personal data in photo albums, scrapbooks and boxes in the attic. While natural disasters and fires certainly pose a one-time risk, consider the more gradual (and much more likely) threats of heat, mildew, and mold.
Your precious family memories could be deteriorating slowly—and without checking, you cannot know for sure.
They’re not meant to last.
Unfortunately, most of the things you have stuffed away in boxes or albums aren’t designed to last forever.
Newspaper clippings, for instance, are particularly fragile, thanks entirely to their composition. Even if you’ve taken the steps necessary to ensure their well-being, you’re still at risk. Lamination, believe it or not, will erode over time —and further, it provides no shield from sunlight, which will ultimately fade news ink completely. Someday, potentially soon, you’ll be left with a pile of brittle yellow slips of paper—showing nothing!
Sometimes it’s not even your fault. If, for example, your old Polaroid or dark-room photographs were developed with chemical compounds just slightly out of proportion, they will eventually corrode to blank. In fact, they could be in the process of corroding now. Old documents, photos, and slides aren’t suited for changes in temperature. And unless all of it is properly stored inside 100% acid-free albums and adhesives, your data is suffering from chemical attrition.
Preserve them before it’s too late.
If you’re over the age of thirty, odds are the majority of your memories are saved and stored in all manner of physical data: photographs, video tapes, and journal entries —to name a few.
Transitioning these forms to the digital space will not only ensures their long-term survival, but will allow you to access them with ease.
The photos we save are reminders of life’s most cherished moments. They tell our stories of our family, our relationships, our culture, our faith, and especially our love. They are inexpressibly important, not just for us but for future generations. They should be protected.
Luckily, you don’t have to worry about doing it on your own. At Forever, we have our own high-quality conversion services as well as a network of partners, our Ambassadors, to help. Contact the Ambassador of this page, Laura Kelly, to get started on saving those precious memories!
What’s next? Click here to find out what to do next!
LK