Subject: Your Phone Is Backed Up. Are Your Childhood Photos?

A missing digital backup exposes a hidden risk inside American homes.

We Back Up Our Phones.

Not Our Childhoods.


Friend,


I’ve spent 36 years preserving family photo collections, and I’m seeing something most people overlook. We automatically back up our phones and panic if we lose even a week of digital photos.


But the only analog photos of childhood — 35mm slides of parents when they were young, home movies of grandparents from decades ago — are usually sitting in boxes somewhere in the house. Just one copy. No backup.


Every day, I hear the horror stories. A pipe leak, a weather disaster, relocating, or just cleaning out a parent’s home. Without digital backups, all that history is at risk.


Everyone protects their digital life. Very few protect their physical photo history.


Friend, most people assume those boxes of vintage snapshots are safe. They aren’t.

I can explain why.


Contact: Mitch Goldstone, Chief Photo Archivist & CEO, ScanMyPhotos, 7 Corporate Park, Irvine, CA 92606, (949) 474-7654, ext. 111.

From a box in the attic…
to the biggest screen in your home.

That’s the upgrade your photo memories deserve.

Kiplinger Excerpt: Showing guests family pictures and home movies can be fun, especially nostalgic ones. "The best reunions happen when old family photos guide the conversation," said Mitch Goldstone, who runs the ScanMyPhotos site.


Ask guests to scan their favorite family images and videos in advance. If you get prints, slides, VHS tapes, or DVDs, hire a professional to digitize them. Expect to pay about $50 for 250 photos and about $30 per VHS tape.


Then create a curated slideshow or film with music to show at the reunion. Try to include funny photos. “The goofy and silly ones are the ones that get the tears and the laughs,” said Goldstone.