What Happens to Your Photos When you Die?

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This is a morbid title, I know.

But I have so many clients who come to me with the same story:

My [fill in the blank family member] recently passed away and now I have boxes and boxes of their photos. I’m overwhelmed and I don’t know what to do with them.

The boxes are filled with a lifetime, often more than a lifetime, of family memories. They span generations. Some are labeled, some are not. Often there are siblings that want to share the photos. But where to start? How do you divide them? Who gets what, and who is going to do the work of going through them all? Most likely you will punt the question and either throw them away or put the whole mess in storage to save for another day “when you have more time.” Why not save future generations from this trouble?

This is no different than estate planning. You spend time determining what will happen to your possessions so that your wishes will be fulfilled, and to make it easier on the loved ones left behind. Your photos are no different.

Organize your photos now, so that future generations can enjoy them.

Assess your photos. Are they digital? Prints? In albums? In loose boxes? Slides? Negatives? Videos?

Photo Albums: likely descendants might want to view and share these, so have them scanned. Don’t want to scan all of the photos? Scan the photos with people in them, these are the ones future generations are more likely to want to keep. Prints that have made it into photo albums are more likely to be prints that future generations would want to keep. But once they are scanned give them a critical eye - will your descendants want the actual albums once they have the digital version? They may not all be worth keeping.

Prints in boxes: Take some time to sort through and discard photos such as scenery, duplicates, and blurry photos. Scan or have someone scan the rest, taking care to name them by date or event so that your physical jumble doesn’t become a digital digital jumble. Slides and negatives can be scanned too. Overwhelmed? Review in short chunks. Focus on what you want to keep, not what you want to throw away - this will speed up the process. Or you can hire a photo organizer to help you.

Videos: these often contain a treasure trove of memories. Have these converted to MP4 so that they can be viewed on phones, computers, and TVs. Once they are converted and backed up, consider tossing the originals.

Don’t allow your photos to burden future generations. Take care of them now.

Access your photos from a cloud service.

The best way to access and share photos moving forward is to place them in a cloud service. Once uploaded, they can be shared with whoever you want, and future generations will not have to deal with the boxes. Albums and prints take up a lot of space. Storing photos online does not. There are many online photo storage sites to choose from, I most often recommend Forever or SmugMug to my clients. What you choose depends on your needs, there is no one size fits all solution, and is a topic I discuss at length with all of my clients. If you would like some help choosing the correct cloud service, and some help getting your photos organized onto one, give me a call.

Keep a backup on an external drive or two.

Finally, keep a copy of your photo collection on an external drive for safekeeping. Better yet, make a second copy and store it somewhere else. I recommend to all of my clients the 3-2-1 method:

• 3 copies of all important photos and documents

• 2 different formats

• 1 copy off-site

So store one copy of your photos on a cloud service as this provides easy access to your photos from anywhere. Then make a copy on a hard drive, in case something happens with the cloud service. Finally, either make a second copy and store it someplace away from the hard drive, or use a backup service like Backblaze as your 3rd copy. Backblaze continually backs up your computer and external drives - I highly recommend subscribing to a service like this to keep your data safe with minimal effort from you.

Following this method allows for one less headache and heartache for those you leave behind, and instead provides them with an organized set of memories to cherish.

I’d love to answer your questions, please leave them in the comments below.