The best ways to back up your wedding photos

As a wedding photographer, I am too aware of how easy it can be to accidentally clear a disk or press a button and delete important files on my computer. Or, too many of my friends and family have experienced, fires, floods, and natural disasters can cause damage or destruction to your wedding photos. It could happen to you too and I DON'T AT ALL want to see you lose any of your wedding photos because of a technology fail or glitch. Or, God forbid, a natural disaster.

This is how I've stored my own wedding photos and (what I think are) the best ways to back up your wedding photos:

1. Once your photographer sends you your album, download the High-Resolution version of your photos immediately onto your computer (these are the highest quality compared to web-size). I recommend saving them in 3-5 places just to be extra safe: your computer, a cloud, and 2 external hard drives.

2. Have each partner or family member save the photos to their personal cloud, google folder, or web-based storage that's secure. Personally, I have my photos saved to my iCloud along with many other important life documents. If something happens to my computer or phone, I'll still have my photos and important life documents saved in the cloud.

3. After saving to a cloud system, I recommend getting 1-2 physical hard drives or jump drives to save them to. Place one in a lock box just to be safe. Technology does update and upgrade as the years go on, so I recommend updating your external drives as the years go on.

4. Print it! Print your photos in an album so you have a physical copy of them. I didn't have my wedding photos printed for years and it made me sad to not be able to look at them and remember them.

5. If you work with me, you'll be using an online digital gallery to download your photos. You can print albums and prints through my gallery- don't worry it's so easy!

6. Not sure how to download your photos? I've got you! Here's a little video of how to use PicTime to download your photos!