What strange times we’re in. For the record, and for the sake of future readers, I’m writing about the COVID-19 crisis gripping the world. Google it, I’ll wait. Or, if Google no longer exists, and we’re all knocked back to darker ages, look it up wherever records of the past reside.

Records of the past is the photographic link here. In our case, as photographers, our records are the photographs we produce, whether artistic self-expression or documenting events with family and friends. Or, in some cases, the dessert you had at a fancy restaurant. Our photographic records are most likely captured digitally and stored digitally. We know the most archival way of saving our records/images for the long term is creating a museum quality print. But that’s not realistically possible due to cost and volume of pictures. We could ruthlessly curate our images to print only the very best but that too is difficult and leaves out many pictures that would normally be nice to have printed. 

So, digital storage and archive it is. Choosing the best method of digital image storage and archive is an opinionated mess and usually leads to many technical articles. This is not the place for that. But now, in these crazy times is the best time to seriously evaluate your archive plan, make adjustments if necessary and/or begin a process.

I have several years of images stored on hard drives, CDs and DVDs that have never been archived or viewed since the initial download off the memory card. Now, in times of social distancing, is the perfect time to go through those images and finally do something with them. I am spending hours going through the back catalog and adding them to Lightroom. I’m key wording and making edits to pictures that I consider good enough. Then I save and make backup copies all digital storage.

The system I’m using has been thought through so that my photographic legacy can be seen far into the future. I have curated the collection of images so others viewing it in the future will know based on ratings and keywords what I consider important photographs.

Get busy establishing your archive plan, there’s plenty of advice out there, then get busy enacting it.

Hint, start here: http://thedambook.com/

Hopefully this isolation will end soon and we can get back to normal.