(And why it’s not because we don’t care)

Yesterday, I reposted a video from photographer Nathan Chanski about something we rarely discuss openly: storage space. How long should photographers keep your photos after a session? You can watch the video here.

When I worked in Peru, my contracts included two years of storage. If a client booked a new session, their storage, as a client, for all their sessions, was extended for another year. When I closed my Peruvian business in 2019 (officially in 2020), all contracts ended in 2021. That was also the year I was starting my photography business here in the Netherlands, which meant I was building something new while still paying to keep thousands of photos from my previous business stored safely. There was no income from those old sessions anymore, but I chose to keep them online for that extra year, exactly as promised, so clients had time to download their memories.

Since then, I’ve built my photography business here in the Netherlands. New country, new rules, new contracts. I now store photos for a set period in digital form. The system is simple:

• Photos are visible in your gallery for six months.
• After that, they’re kept offline for two more years (still safe, just not public).
• After the contract period ends, they are deleted.

Why? Because storage space isn’t endless. The larger my archive grows, the higher the cost, and the greater the risk of losing files from old, failing drives. Keeping every single session from the past 10+ years simply isn’t sustainable.

This week, I got a message from a wedding client from 2012 asking for their photos. Luckily, I still had them in my gallery, but bringing them back online, transferring from physical to digital storage, and keeping them available requires time and costs. That’s why there’s a retrieval fee.

Think of it like your own Google Drive or iCloud: you pay monthly to keep your photos there. For photographers, it’s the same, except we’re storing thousands of high-resolution images for many clients, not just for ourselves.

I understand that photos are precious. I love preserving memories, and I’ve actually kept Peruvian clients’ photos much longer than my contracts required. But there’s a limit to what’s possible, especially as I focus on my current clients here in the Netherlands.

So, if you ever book a photo session with me or any photographer, please make sure you download and back up your images as soon as you receive them. Your memories are too important to leave sitting on someone else’s hard drive.

At the end of the day, these photographs are more than files; they’re little pieces of your story. I’ll always do my best to keep them safe while they’re with me, but the safest place for them is in your own hands, backed up and ready to be enjoyed for years to come.

See you in Amsterdam anytime,

Joanna

Your photographer in Amsterdam