The survey we did of our email groups taught us some useful information. There were specific problems that missionaries and their parents discovered in dealing with digital cameras, memory cards, transferring photos, bad cameras, etc. We found that many preferred a website to keep their photos "safely stored".

• Some have a time limit you have to search to find. Mothers have gone to retrieve photos only to find that they are No Longer There! - - deleted because of the time limit.
• Other websites require family and friends to subscribe, and photos cannot be shared with others unless they are either paid members and/or belong to the same 'group'.
• A photo website has literally disappeared off the internet; gone out of business? Who knows? It just isn't there anymore.

1. Burning their photos to CDs. If they burn 2, they can keep one and send the other one home where the parents can upload them to the photo internet site. CDs can go bad, especially the ones marked RW, or Re-writable. They also can get lost, scratched or broken. CDs we burn ourselves are not as long-lived as commercial 'burn-once' CDs because they are made of a softer material.
2. Some missionaries are choosing to send home their camera's memory cards. Parents can then upload them directly into the internet site with a card reader.

• Free service, no hidden fees backed by a company that has the financial resources to keep the website in business.
• No expiration date or maximum time limits on photo storage.
• Easy to use, safe and secure.
• Photos are stored forever. Servers are backed up, and photos stored in the Granite Vaults in the canyons outside of Salt Lake City. No other website offers this level of redundancy which translates into photograph security.
• If missionaries are able to access a website, they can upload their digital photos directly into their own free internet account. The photos will be safe and secure, and when they come home, they can enjoy them.
• Will print digital photos for as low as 12 cents.
• Gives ideas on what you can do with your photos, including items for missionaries.
• Offers products that can be used for personal & family history, genealogy, display or just fun.

In addition to the information above, this site offers very high resolution scanning of your old photos, which they put on the website and send to you on a CD. Our returned missionaries who used the old 35mm cameras are now sending in their photos to be scanned and stored. Nothing can harm them if they are stored in a secure website, and you can share these old photos with other family members or friends.

The nice thing about having photos stored on a website is that they will still be there if a computer crashes at home. They are secure and won't be harmed if there is a house fire, tornado, hurricane, mud slide or flood. Hey, we had a "flood" destroy our photos when our oldest child was 13 years old. We had just moved into an older home, and stored our boxed things in the storage room in the basement. We took off for a long awaited family vacation. A week later when we came home, we discovered that our water heater had "sprung a leak", and emptied itself all over our boxes. Everything was mush...totally ruined!

CD's can go bad. Our daughter had her wedding slides on a CD. When they returned from their honeymoon, they sat down to watch it, and it had gone bad. They only got streaks on the screen. No backup had been made. To top it off, our son-in-law's mother lost one of his precious baby photos. He had very few to begin with.

Memory cards can also go bad or end up "empty". All photos can be lost.

Batteries in digital cameras that don't use memory cards can go dead, erasing all of the photos on the camera. This happened with the digital pictures of our first grand child.