Save Your Photos Day is celebrated on the last Saturday of September every year, falling on September 28 this year. This was an initiative by the Save Your Photos Alliance, conceptualized by The Association of Personal Photo Organizers. Photos help us preserve our precious memories and look back at them but very often, we forget to preserve the photos themselves. Photos can get misplaced, deleted, or damaged at any moment. They do not last forever if left without any care. Save Your Photos Day aims to remind us just how essential preserving our photos is because that’s all that gets left behind as time goes by.
History of Save Your Photos Day
The word Photography was first used in the 1830s. It was derived from the Greek words ‘photos’ meaning ‘light’ and ‘graphein’ meaning ‘to draw’ and supposedly coined by the British scientist Sir John Herschel.
Before the digital camera existed, there were earlier forms of photography that created images by playing with light and focusing it on specific objects that needed to be captured.
Heliography was the first type of photography, discovered by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1816. It involved using plates coated with bitumen and putting them inside an older prototype of the camera called a Camera Obscura. The plates were then exposed to sunlight for a significant period and the exposed parts became hard. The other parts of the plate were washed off. Imprints were thus made at first using sunlight.
The daguerreotype was another form of photography developed in 1837. It was named after Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre. It didn’t create any negatives and used copper plates. The plate was exposed to a picture and sunlight for some time and then solidified with heated mercury fumes. After this, the plate would be washed using saltwater and the reversed photo would form. The daguerreotype was the first type of photography to have become popular in America.
There were other different types of photography like Calotype, Cyanotype, Ambrotype that were discovered at later stages. In 1935, Kodak introduced the color film Kodachrome. There were various processes involved in this, each using different colors of dyes like cyan, magenta, and yellow. Kodak was responsible for a lot of big inventions in the field of photography during this time. In 1975, Steve Sasson, who used to work at Kodak, was behind the invention of the world’s first digital camera.
Save Your Photos Day timeline
It is the first type of photography that forms images using sunlight and a camera prototype called the Camera Obscura.
Derived from Greek, the word is allegedly coined by the British scientist Sir John Herschel.
Is a more advanced type of photography than its predecessor quickly gains popularity.
Marks the birth of a new era in photography with the use of colors from different kinds of dye in film.
Steve Sasson, an employee of Kodak, invents the world’s first digital camera.
Save Your Photos Day FAQs
What is the best way to store photos?
Photos can be stored on an external hard drive or even on a cloud storage service like Dropbox, Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive.
Does iPhone Backup save photos?
Yes, iTunes sync creates backup files for everything on your iPhone gallery as long as they were taken using the phone camera.
Do Google Photos stay forever?
Google Photos will stay in your account for as long as your account is active and you log in from time to time.
How To Celebrate Save Your Photos Day
Bring out those dusty photo albums
Remember those giant photo albums in the storage room collecting dust? Bring them out one by one and start organizing them using labels and markers. Family albums contain many hidden treasures — see what you discover!
Backup photos into a drive
Backing up your pictures into an external hard drive or a cloud service like Google Photos will only take you a few minutes. Get started right away.
Make a digital archive
If you want to make all your photo albums from the past purely digital, then this option is for you. Locate a scanner and start scanning all of your photographs to digitize them and store them into an archive.
5 Captivating Facts About Photography
The first color photograph was taken in 1861
Suggested by Thomas Sutton, the color image was created by layering three separate images of red, green, and blue filters and projecting them onto a photosensitive plate.
The most viewed photograph of all time
The default Windows XP picture taken by Charles O’Rear in 1996 is the most viewed photograph in history.
Cat photos are not a current trend
Cat photos are one of the most popular Google searches now but they actually originated in the 19th century.
The earliest photograph is 200 years old
The photo called “View from the window” was taken by Joseph Niepce almost 200 years ago and it took eight hours to capture.
Coffee can be used to develop negatives
Black and white negatives can be developed using coffee, vitamin C, and washing soda.
Why We Celebrate Save Your Photos Day
To save our memories
Photos don’t last forever. They can get lost, damaged, or deleted. Taking care of our photos is crucial if we want to hold onto our memories.
For future generations
We are not the only audience of our photos. The generations that come after us will also want to see photos from the past. It is important to store pictures for their sake as well.
To organize our storage
Photos usually take up at least 60% to 70% of our storage space on our mobile phones. Backing them up into a drive will allow us to free up more space and make room for fresh memories.
Save Your Photos Day dates
| Year | Date | Day |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | September 24 | Saturday |
| 2023 | September 30 | Saturday |
| 2024 | September 28 | Saturday |
| 2025 | September 27 | Saturday |
| 2026 | September 26 | Saturday |
Log In With Google