I have always taken hundreds of photographs of my kids.
With Abbey and Callan I had a camera that required a 35mm film and I remember spending a fortune sending them in to be developed and then meticulously added all my photo’s to albums – I have a loft full of them.
As the years have gone by, we invested in digital camera’s which have been great for allowing us to take as many pictures as we want, without the additional costs.
There is one, no two, problems with this:
- We take more pictures and videos of family life than ever before, but as a family we share, view, print and experience them less and less.
- Storing them on our devices uses up memory and can leave them running slowly, plus we have masses of digital content on different mobile and home devices that we’re not backing up – how many of you have been devastated to lose photo’s when a device breaks?
Did you know?
WD has commissioned research with YouGov on how we share our family images.
- Despite the fact that 71% of UK parents say that family albums were very or fairly important to their household when they were growing up, some 39% have never created albums for their own families, and one quarter have not looked at a photo album in over a year.
- Amongst all UK adults who don’t make their own family albums (47%), the main reasons stopping them are having too many photos (20%), not having enough time (19%), or not knowing where to start (8%).
- Although parents each have an average of 4,470 photos/videos on their mobiles, tablets, PCs and USBs, only 30% of parents back up all their photos.
- 39% of UK parents with digital devices (e.g. phones, laptops/ computers, tablets,
hard drives) are not printing any of their photos/ videos, 43% don’t share any on
social media and 34% don’t send them (via email, WhatsApp etc.). - Some 65% of parents are taking the photos rather than appearing in them.
- 45% of parents who create family albums use photos that other family members have taken.
What’s the solution?
I am working with Western Digital’s My Cloud Home, to start celebrating those memories
as a family and reinvigorating the family album for the digital age.
My Cloud Home offers you one central place with enough space to store your photos and videos, organise everything your way and quickly access from anywhere using easy-to-use search with the My Cloud Home mobile or desktop app, or on MyCloud.com.
You can set up a Family Folder, so that everyone who is logged in to your My Cloud Home device automatically has access to it, making it really easy to share picture with members of your family / other users.
About My Cloud Home
My Cloud Home is a clever storage device that plugs directly into your Wi-Fi router at home so you can easily save, organise and control all the family’s digital content in one central place while accessing it from anywhere with an internet connection.
It’s a quick and simple solution for minimising digital overload, and because it’s so easy to use and simple to set up, it gives you more free time to enjoy these treasured memories with your loved ones and find the pictures and images you want at the click of a button or swipe of a finger.
It automatically back up photos and videos on your phone to My Cloud Home so you can make room for more. Enormous capacity and plugs into your network to wirelessly back up every computer at home to one central place. Works seamlessly with Windows Backup and Time Machine software.
Celebrate your memories and organise a #ScreeningSunday
With My Cloud Home, you can start celebrating those memories together and reinvigorate the family album for the digital age, by showing how wonderful it can be to share pictures and videos as a family in a regular #ScreeningSunday; a moment in time, may be 20 minutes on Sunday afternoon, where you all gather together and look over your pictures as a family.
We had great fun looking back at pictures of days out long forgotten and the kids loved seeing themselves a few years ago and could not believe how much they had changed.
Do you make photo albums or look back at old photographs?
Disclaimer: I’m working in a paid relationship with My Cloud Home and BritMums on their Bring Back the Family Album campaign
I love our My Cloud Home. It’s a great way of getting all the photo’s and videos we share in one place and looking at these photos together online is a great way to relive those memories
It’s really interesting to hear the different ways you had to capture and process your family photos with your older children versus how it is now with digital content. But you are right, we don’t always look back on our digital stuff because we don’t know where to start! I’m glad that the My Cloud Home is working for you!
Such a great device, it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for all these years that I’ve been desperate to finally sort out my family photos. Now I can pull them all into one place, and start making sense of the madness haha! Great to hear you’re enjoying using it too x
What a fantastic tool this. The sooner everything is in the cloud and not stored locally in my house the better!
What a fantastic idea! As a blogger I seem to be taking endless photos of our children, so being able to easily look back on them would be so lovely 🙂
This is such an awesome idea! Although I’m pretty good at getting my photos off my phone, I definitely don’t back them up anywhere near enough. Also, all my promises to make a year book have resulted in one year book from the entire length of my 10 year relationship…which is a shame when looking back through photos is so much fun; I’ll definitely be looking into the My Cloud Home!
My Cloud Home sounds great! My mummy stores all her imagery on a hard drive, so it would be nice to access it more x
My Cloud Home sounds like a brilliant way to relive memories of loved ones all in one place and a good way to use technology to store photos too!
I take loads of pictures but I hardly ever get them printed. I need to change that this year. My Cloud Home sounds fab.
What a great idea, I seem to have folders on various devices and can never find what I am looking for. x
What a fun thing to do, my uncle is great for always bringing out the family pictures when we are at their house, it is great to look back on times gone by.
I like the idea of viewing pics, even for 20 mins a week. Our kids get such a kick out of looking at old pics…
I have loads of photo albums full of photos but I don’t really have the space for them which is a shame x
Wow, you had a camera with 35mm film? Actually, don’t know why I’m so surprised because I did also! Anyway, I love the My Cloud Home. Been using it myself and I found it very easy to set up and so straightforward to use.
Being able to access the pictures everywhere is the biggest appeal here for me as I have them store all over the place
This is a good one, I love that you can access the pictures anywhere – massive plus point x
I have been looking at getting a WD Cloud Home as I have been hearing great things about them from the IT Manager at my husband’s workplace. You have me sold 🙂
I LOVE the sound of this. My laptop is getting so clogged up with photos so this storage sounds perfect. I love that it plugs in direct to your WiFi.
This is absolutely brilliant, I need something like this. I have so many photos and videos on my phone and I have been looking for cloud options but a bit worried about the privacy options. This looks like a great alternative!
Oh wow I love the look of that, I definitely want something like that as we never print pictures off anymore
As someone who takes hundreds of photos, this sounds like what I need to help me store my kids photos in an album format for viewing especially during family gatherings.
We are really enjoying our My Cloud, it’s such a great device and really makes a difference to sharing photos!