Why You Should Invest in Photo Storage

Sometime's I feel like I’m getting “ten-dollared” to death. This is my fancy term for spending $10 here and $10 there… Spotify, Netflix, etc… everyone wants “just ten dollars”. Eventually, you’re looking at your credit card statement and wondering why it's so expensive. These small seemingly innocuous purchases add up. And I’m cheap or, frugal shall we say… so I completely understand the hesitation to spend another chunk of hard-earned money every month on saving your images in the cloud. But, hear me out, this time it's different. 

Think back to when photography wasn’t free and involved buying film and the cost of processing. If you weren’t around then (the good old days) then follow along for this short history lesson:

When I worked at the photo lab in college, a roll of film would cost me about $3. This was the generic no-name brand that I liked quite a bit. I would shoot most things on this film: it fit into my student budget and I was generally happy with the quality. Some photographers preferred name-brand film like Kodak or Fuji. Depending on the film stock, this could run you anywhere from $5 to $8 a roll. It was easy to justify the extra cost when your family memories were being entrusted to the quality of the emulsion. Paying more was a little like buying insurance. The fancier film could cost up to $20 a roll and was usually something a professional would buy.

A store-bought roll of film would get you 24 or 36 shots. Many people planned their frames carefully as not to waste them. Some people shot just one roll of film a year, others would photograph one a month and multiple rolls on vacation. Suffice to say, most of us weren’t snapping 2000 frames a year like we are today.

Once the film was exposed, you would take it to the lab to get developed and printed. Some would head to the grocery store photo counter, and others would choose a more elevated experience at a trusted photo store. I had a staff discount at the lab where I worked so that’s where I processed my film. The retail cost for this service was usually $8 to $12 depending on where you were going. Pro labs were known for exceptional service and the photographers would pay accordingly.

All this to say, photography used to cost something. We used to make investments into good film stock and good labs so that our memories would be preserved in print. We used to value this service and sometimes it was ok to go to the cheap lab but other times, if the photos were extra special, you’d take your rolls to the pro lab. At the pro lab, you were confident they would be treated just that much more carefully.  

Let’s do a little math now (not my strong suit, but bear with me)…

Keeping in mind the above costs, if I shot 12 rolls of the cheap stuff a year, and developed it at an average cost of $10 a roll, it would cost about $160 for just 288 photos. Let me say that again, about 160 bucks for two hundred and eighty-eight photos. All in all, the cost to take, process and print an image was about $0.50 apiece. Fifty cents for one image… yet people were willing to invest because photos had value. 

So now, fast forward to today, where my current photo habit has me taking about 6000 images a year on my iPhone alone. Can you imagine if it cost me $3000 to save those images somewhere? Yikes! 

But how about if I said those same images, requiring less than 30GB of storage size, would cost as low as $25/year with a big provider. Not so bad, right? Would you be willing to invest $25 to save a year’s worth of memories? Isn’t it worth $25 for peace of mind? I’m quite sure you’ll agree it is.