In another thread we've been discussing the demise of Jessops, the well-known chain of photographic stores. Reasons for their collapse have generally been agreed to be the changes in the way that people buy cameras, and possibly the fact that phone cameras are nowadays being used by young people as their only way of taking photographs.

I was struck by one of Quickbeam's posts, in which he said (about younger people)

*"When they change phones they don't even keep copies of the photos that were taken on today's iWow phone. The photo content is considered as obsolete as the phone. Which means in 20/30 years time they won't find happy memories of the past at the back of the sock drawer when they find the postcard prints and negatives of holidays taken when they were still slim and fresh faced."*

and I got to wondering how you store your photographic images. Do you archive them on your computer hard drive, looking at them when the thought strikes you, or do you back them up to removable media, leaving them for some future time, when you promise yourself you'll sort them out somehow?

I confess, right at the start, that I fall into the last category. I'm a keen DSLR photographer, and I have thousands of images stored in date order on memory sticks and CDs - all waiting for the moment when I have enough time to sort through and delete those that aren't worth keeping.

In days gone by people had photograph albums containing prints of photographs they took on holiday, or of the children growing up, etc., but does anyone do that nowadays? Film and processing costs were quite expensive, but now we can all take as many digital photographs as we like, at virtually no cost. Are they ending up in a way that makes it a pain to show friends and relatives, or to browse through on the spur of the moment?

Please tell, I would like to know if I'm among friends.