Newborn Photography in Camas, Washington. Tips on How to Care for your Newborn Prints, Albums, and Digital Files.

Preserving your newborn photographs in multiple places can help you avoid heartbreak if you should ever lose them. Take it from me, a Camas Washington newborn photographer, who lost most of her daughters newborn photos. Yep, read that again. I lost almost all of them. Keep reading for tips on how to care for your prints, albums, and digital files.

I still hate admitting it. I am so grateful for the ones I did back up, like the photos from our newborn photographer and the few I shared on social media (thanks Facebook time hop!). Unfortunately, I lost about the first 6 months of her life from my phone. It made me realize how important it was to back up those candid phone photos and professional photographs.

I was scrambling to make my son lunch while my daughter was needing something, you know-just trying to make everyone happy and do five things at once. So, I rushed to grab the heavy glass bowl on the top shelf of the cabinet and it crashed-right onto the face of my phone. I couldn’t unlock it, my cloud storage was full, so that was it. They were gone. I tried everything to get those precious photographs back.

Here are a few tips that are easy to do and ensure you will not lose those precious newborn photos like I did.

Back up Newborn Digital Photos in Multiple Places

Upon delivery of all of my photos to every family I photograph, I encourage them to save their photos to multiple places such as: a cloud storage service and a USB drive, two USB drives, or an external hard drive and cloud service. This almost guarantees you’ll always have one set if you were to accidently lose the other. I use SmugMug and large external hard drives to save my photos. I love having just a few places to go when I want to access my photos, so I prefer the WD elements hard drive and my cloud storage from SmugMug.

Print Your Newborn Photographs

Most of us love to share our photographs of our kids and family on social media but it’s important to print your newborn photographs so you and your family can enjoy them also, after all that’s why you hired a newborn photographer. Print your photos with a quality lab, like Millers Lab, which is the lab I choose for my professional photographs and for my clients. I encourage families to avoid places that offer really cheap prints, they will not look the same and will likely not age well. Sure, for those thousands of phone photos you have, choose an economical print lab, like Shutterfly but for the photographs you’ve invested in, I highly encourage a quality print lab.

Store Your Newborn Prints & Albums Safely

The way you store your newborn photographs impacts the longevity of your prints. Keeping them out of direct sunlight, in a cool/dry area of your home, and avoiding finger prints directly on photos will help preserve your newborn photos. Additionally, avoid keeping photos together with paperclips, rubber-bands, or tape. I love looking at photos with my kids, especially my four year old sons newborn photos. However, I help him handle them carefully and turn the page in the photo album for him. I know it can be challenging when they are little as they want to do it themselves, however, they are not little forever and they will be glad to have them to look back on when they are adults too.