Archiving, Backing Up, & Legacy Planning
“Peter is a master. Not only did he very patiently and competently teach me the ins and outs of Lightroom, his technical advice is also priceless: He sagely recommended that I subscribe to Backblaze to back up the photos I keep on an external hard drive. Yesterday, my 4 TB hard drive crashed, and with it, 1,000s of edited photos. Without Peter’s counsel, I’d be toast!”
What’s the difference between archiving and backing up
Legacy planning and archiving helps you prepare your family photos and history as well as your creative visual assets so they can be shared and preserved for the future. Backup solutions help you safeguard your analog and digital assets today.
Backing up is always the priority. Once you have safeguarded your files, you can begin to make plans for archiving and passing things on.
What is your legacy?
We tend to think of our legacy as it pertains to our lives and our family history—both presently and for those who came before us. Often, we find ourselves as the family member (whether we want to be or not) responsible for preserving and passing on the family photos and stories. It can feel like a heavy burden; I know, I’ve been there. But in the end, I’ve also found it to be an incredible and unique journey—one I’m grateful I had the chance to take.
If you're like me, you may also have a creative legacy you wish to preserve. My photographic career is as much a part of my life as my family history. I also have clients who bring me the photography or artistic works of a parent that they want to begin archiving and keeping safe.
Start asking yourself: What is the legacy you wish to preserve and pass on?
Backing up
Backing up all your files from your computer and any external drives is absolutely essential. It's also simple and inexpensive, yet it is something too many people put off doing. Good intentions will not save you from catastrophic loss. When disaster strikes, as it did here in Los Angeles, it happens fast and with no time for preparation. Local backup is good and can be set up simply and quickly. But having off-site backup is paramount as no amount of local backup will save you if something happens to your home. I have easy and inexpensive solutions, don't put this off any longer.
Archiving
Archiving your visual and written assets are the steps you can take to preserve and pass on your legacy of family photos and history, as well as the creative artistic and professional work you have done, or a member of your family has done during a lifetime. When we do this, we not only provide a continuity for our own family history by sharing it across generations, but we ensure that our part of our collective human history is preserved and passed on as well.
I can help with the archiving of both your physical and digital assets. Digital archiving is still relatively new, but I have come up with a number of solutions that I can share with you.
Where do I begin?
Legacy Planning can seem like an overwhelming project. Where do you start? What is too little? What is too much? Identifying both your digital and analog assets is a critical first step, this will start to give you a better overall picture of what you have and how your stories can be told. There are many excellent and creative ways to preserve and pass on older prints, slides, film, video, documents, letters, and artwork that I can tell you about. But it is also critical to digitize these precious one of a kind items, and I can help provide the services to do this. Go to my Digitizing Your Analog Life page for more information.
Do you want to do it yourself? get help?
(or maybe a little of both)
Creating a Legacy project is a process not an event. Our best intentions may tell us we can do it all ourselves, but it becomes apparent that at some point we will need help, there is just too much to learn and do, especially involving software products and online platforms. I’ve been teaching people how to use a number of popular software programs for years. I also work with archival web platforms that I can tell you about. I specialize in explaining complicated technology in simple and easy to understand ways. Go to my Training and Help page for more information.
