What do you do with your photos once you take them? Are you still shooting film or are you shooting digital? If you are shooting digital are you storing your images on your memory card or on your computer? Maybe burning them to CDs? These are all good ways to store your images for the short term but they aren't easy to share with family and friends. And, if something happens to your storage medium (whether a disk, harddrive, or memory card) you could lose all these images forever.

Todays images are probably going to be lost to time. There aren't going to be images of kids growing up, your spouse, or your new bike. These images are going to be lost to time. The digital revolution has taken over and people are shooting more pictures than ever before but they aren't printing them. With cameras built into cellphones, photos being stored on Ipods, and all the photos that are E-Mailed there aren't going to be any prints around in the next few years. As people E-Mail their images, or store them on their harddrives, these images don't get printed. They aren't going to be available for future generations to see.

Previous generations shot photos on film. When they got these processed they had prints. Sometimes the images just ended up in shoe boxes, but a lot of times they ended up in albums. Either way, there was a printed photo that created a permanent record. These albums and shoeboxes have been handed down from generation to generation. I don't see how this can possibly happen with E-Mailed images and JPGs stored on harddrives.

Some people still shoot film today. These people will have prints of all their photos. These prints have the ability to be passed on to future generations. This holds true for the digital shooters that print their images and create albums or scrapbook.

Scrapbooking has grown a lot over the last few years. Scrapbooks, wedding albums and memory albums are all great ways to share images and save memories for the future. With the thousands of scrapbooking products available I see this as a great way to save and share images.

It seems to me that the ease of digital shooting has created its own problems. Without making prints you don't have any permanence. Negatives from the 1800s can still be printed today, but will someone in the year 2100 be able to print from a CD or a SmartMedia card? I don't think so.

Most labs now offer 4" x 6" prints for under twenty cents a piece. With digital you can pick and choose which prints you like and at twenty cents (or less) there really isn't a reason to not be making prints. Don't lose the memories, find your images no matter where they are and get some prints made. Years from now you will be glad you did.

Victor H. Schlosser is a photographer, writer, and Web Site Designer/Consultant. He writes about Photography, Motorcycles, Marketing, and the Internet, with articles being published both online and in print.

This report © Copyright 2010, Victor H. Schlosser - All Rights Reserved