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As photographers, we naturally produce thousands of digital photographs. If you’re like me, you would never want to lose a single one. Luckily, CD and DVD burners are cheap and available these days, and if you’re smart, you’re already creating backups of your digital images.

But there’s a problem, especially if you’re using those regular old discs.

Unlike pressed CDs and DVDs, discs that you burn yourself eventually deteriorate due to a number of reasons. The time it takes for this to occur depends on many factors, such as the quality of the disc and how you store them (what, your car’s dashboard isn’t the best?) One thing is for certain though; that disc of pictures you took of your kid when he was born probably won’t be readable when he pops it in to show his kids someday.

So what do you do about this? You start archiving your images on archival DVDs. Many claim a shelf life of around 100 years if you store them properly. Why, that might even be long enough to make it until the next big media is around and DVDs are dead.

Archival DVDs are more expensive, but if you use them for your more important things like photo archiving, then you won’t rack up the costs too much. You can still use regular discs for everything else. You can get them at Amazon.

Now, if they could only invent a DVD that’s fireproof, then we’d be in business. Until then, the safety deposit box will have to do. You do have one of those, don’t you?