Television series ‘The Middle’ shows why making prints of your photographs is important

Two years ago, we asked whether or not you keep printed photographs anymore. Surprisingly, a great deal of you did, with 64% of readers responding that they do indeed print out and keep physical copies of their photographs on hand.

While it’s becoming ever-cheaper to purchase extra hard drives and cloud storage, many people feel as though the safest way to preserve their work is to get it physically printed out.

This is something the fictional Heck family of the television series The Middle learned all too unfortunately when their sister Sue attempted to upload photos from her camera to the computer and somehow managed to erase every image ever saved on their computer.

In the episode, Sue can be seen suggesting turning the computer off and back on, but all to no avail. The images were gone. Forever. Even the one of her son doing a wonderful flip off the wall.

This is obviously dramatized, but it’s a reminder that you should always have your photos backed up, either digitally offsite or physically.

Personally, I’m much more a fan of keeping multiple digital copies in two locations, as well as on an online backup service. Since I shoot film though, I do keep all of my negatives inside a fireproof safe. But those photos have also been digitized and are stored in their respective locations.

Whatever your methodology of archiving your work is, just be sure that you’re safe no matter what. Considering the cost of storage, there’s no reason to not invest in protection, be it physical prints or digital negatives.