Episode 475: Protect your precious memories

Hello everyone, this is Rebecca Greene for the Whining Pluza podcast, and I am very excited today because I get to talk to the lovely Krista Kowalczyk. Krista, thank you so much for being here with me today.

Absolutely, I'm so happy to chat with you today.

We're gonna, we're gonna go by the Krista K and make my life easier, but, um, I love her cool last name. But I want to tell you all about Krista because she's going to help all of us today, and selfishly, I'm super excited for myself. Krista is a nationally recognized expert in memory preservation and disaster preparedness whose work has been featured— are you ready for this— on Good Morning America, The Kelly Clarkson Show, ABC World News Tonight, and In the Knot and Brides. Is that two different shows, The Knot and Brides, or is that one show?

That's from my wedding photography. So my career started as a photographer. And so The Knot magazine and Brides magazine have featured my work.

Yeah, amazing, amazing. Krista, known as the Krista Kay, which I love. She's not just an award-winning photographer and memory keeper. She's a storyteller who helps families protect what matters most. Krista is the 2023 Mentor of the Year by the Foundation for Lee County Public Schools. Schools, and a proud inductee of the KNOT Hall of Fame. Her new book, Beyond the Storm, is a heartfelt blend of a memoir and how-to guide that teaches families how to safeguard their memories before disaster strikes. Holy moly, Krista, what a topic! I love this so much, you know I do. So tell us, tell us the inspiration. You started as a photographer and now your mission is to help families preserve their memories. So what inspired that shift?

Yeah, for sure. And thank you for having me on to chat about this. I'm very excited about it. So I, I'm a lifelong photographer. It's the only thing I've ever wanted to do. I've loved photography my entire life. Got my bachelor's degree in photography, started my business as a wedding and family portrait photographer right out of college and did that for— it's I still do that. I still photograph families and weddings. But after 25 years of doing that, loving my career, never thinking I was going to do anything different, I mean, I was doing exactly what I loved. Hurricane Ian came and just devastated my area where I live here in Southwest Florida, and it was just so eye-opening and insane. Just the devastation that happened was more than I could have even understood beforehand. But as I was helping a family a friend to just clean out their home that had gotten floodwater. So there was— some reports say as much as 20 feet of floodwater came into homes, and not just beachfront homes. I mean, homes all over our county and in this region were just destroyed. And some of them, like my friend's father, it was just, you know, he was just an everyday guy in his late 80s, retired man, been living in the same home for 60-some years, and his home was completely destroyed. So I just volunteered to go there like everyone in my area was doing. We were all just volunteering to help our friends. And I learned when I got there to help them just take all their stuff to the curb and just help them clean out this, this disaster, um, that their photographs, all their family photographs were in there. So it was my friend's childhood photos that were in her father's home. It was his wedding pictures. It was his heritage, things going back to his, his heritage in Germany. These photographs were all in different parts of the home, from hanging on the wall to photo albums in a closet. They were completely covered in this disgusting mud that covered everything. They were waterlogged. They were gross. And some of them had started— they take— taking them to the trash. And a few of them she thought were special, so she had spread them across the yard and said, is there anything you can do to try to get something out of this? And I was like, oh my gosh, there's so much we can do. We can— most photos are waterproof. We can wash them, we can clean them, then we can digitize them, we can digitally repair them. So I started doing that for her. While I was doing it, neighbors were coming over, other people in the neighborhood saying, well, what's, what's going on here? We just threw our photos out. Should we not have thrown those out? And so I was like, oh my gosh, don't throw them out. You know, you can save them. So I just came home after, I think, a day or two of helping with her photos. I came home and started posting all over my photography business social media. I was just saying, hey, you know, a lot of local people on there I was connected to. I said, don't throw them out. This is what you need to do. I can help if you need help. Like, just let me know. And so people started reaching out to me that way. I went to a couple of houses just door to door while I was in that neighborhood, just saying, hey, you know, just so you know, don't throw those out. And it just kind of snowballed from there. I started helping more and more people, filling my car with these moldy photographs trip after trip to bring them back to my house to wash them. Because you have to think, too, there's no power, there's no electricity. A lot of them didn't have running water. So while, yes, they could have been washed, how are you even going to wash them? So I was trying to help people that way. And through that process, I started to realize from talking to, I mean, dozens and dozens of people who were just devastated that their photos were— some, some were destroyed, some couldn't have been saved, and many were. But as I had these conversations every day with so many people, I realized that most everyone didn't know that they could have proactively secured those photographs. There were steps they could have taken to make sure the memory was safe by digitizing them. And it's actually not that hard. You don't need to be super tech savvy. And I think as I talked to people, I realized they didn't know that. I thought, well, I need to maybe make this a broader thing than just helping people who've been, been hurt by this storm, but helping people to proactively understand what they can do with their old photos, the, the heritage photos, their family pictures. Um, and that's also led into what to do with your own mess of photos, what's on your phone today and how safe are they really? And, you know, while they might not be destroyed by floodwater. They also have risks we're taking with the way we keep our photos on our phone. So that's, that's my story. And that just led me in this whole path of just every day now I'm posting on social media, I'm teaching classes, I'm hosting workshops to just help people to get control of all of their photos.

What I mean, that story is amazing. I love the inspiration behind it. And I am one of the many, many people who are guilty of needing your help because, like, I mean, from the photos hanging in my house to the photo albums to the phone with the thousands— my husband yells at me— thousands of pictures. I mean, where do we even start? Like, help us. I don't even know where to start and what question to start with.

Well, you know, I think of it as 2 projects. You have your old print photos, you have photos from your childhood, your parents' pictures. So that's one project. And then a second project is the digital photos that you have. So you're gonna kind of think of doing 2 things at the same time and in their own, in their own pace. I would start by saying the phone pictures. The easiest thing to do with your phone pictures is start a routine that starts today going forward. What I find from talking to people is they're gonna do it tomorrow, that they think they need to start with 2008 or 2020 or whatever the beginning of their phone is or the beginning of their digital photos are. And that's where they need to start. So they aren't starting. And then I talk to people and next thing, 3 months have gone by and then 8 months have gone by. And I have a feeling years are going to go by that it doesn't get addressed. So I feel like if you start with today, this day now, and you go forward, you, you will, you're always going to have that last 10 years. It wasn't organized. You're not always, you're going to have it there to come to. But at least you'll always have today forward organized. And I like to think of organizing phone pictures, it's a routine you have to get into. I, I think that, um, right now that we're mixing screenshots in with birthday parties and graduations, and it's also, you know, the, the thing we didn't buy at the store, the shoes we're considering. And when that's mixed in with the graduation pictures, we're kind of devaluing our photos a little bit. So I think an organizing process going and organizing, and then also a backing up process to make sure they're both neat and they're neat and safe. Um, and starting that with today and making it routine, that's no different than brushing your teeth. It's something that you're going to do regularly. That's part of, um, just part of your routine. And I, I honestly think a monthly, just, um, addressing it monthly is plenty, but making sure that you're doing it once a month.

So what does the organizational process look like?

So, um, for starters, you wanna make sure that your pictures are being backed up. Well, I think a lot of people have iCloud or Google Photos, which is great. I, I definitely suggest you have that first layer of protection, it's important to understand that that's kind of a mirror. I talked to a lady a little while back and she had a whole month of photos that were missing. And I— the best she could come up with is maybe her, her grandson had played with her phone, like maybe he deleted them. But once they're deleted from your phone, they're deleted from iCloud as well. And so while it is— it's a layer of protection, it's a mirror. So it's doing the exact same thing. So I hate to hear people that are solely relying on that, saying my photos are all safe because they're in iCloud. There are, there are cloud services that aren't a mirror, like Dropbox, or I use Amazon Photos, and these are basically a duplicate. So they, your pictures are in another location. So now when you delete anything on your phone, it doesn't delete off of your, it won't delete out of Amazon Photos as well. So the first thing I say is to just make sure your pictures are being backed up to an additional cloud service. Like that. And that's something that, you know, you can just— it does it automatically. You can have it set up to, you know, you open the app and it just backs them up. There's no effort involved in that. It's just a matter of signing up for the service from the beginning. So that would be the very first step I would suggest that people do is making sure they're actually getting a safe backup. I then suggest, and also once a month I go in and I back them up to my computer too. So I have an external hard drive And I keep all of my photos. And the nice thing with the external hard drive is that I have all of the old— but my scanned photos, everything from my grandparents' pictures going back to the early 1900s to the pictures I took last month are all organized by year in one location. So that's just an— that's my secondary thing. And that's what I would suggest beyond just having the cloud service to also have this. And then, you know, your photos are safe. And then I will say one more thing that I suggest in terms of— so that's a safe— those are safety measures. Organization-wise, there's some great apps. There's one I use called Daily Delete that goes through your photos and it uses AI technology to suggest things that you delete. So that's really a great app and something that's— it's just super easy. It's kind of— it gamifies it a little bit, so it makes it a little fun. And it's something you can do in line at the supermarket or it's just a, you know, open up the app, look at you know, look at the, the photos it's suggesting you delete. You can just blindly trust it. And I've heard people say that they're, they're like, yeah, it's great. I, it, it does a great job. So I just trust that it deletes the, the duplicates. Or, you know, when you go to the birthday party, if you take 300 pictures like I do, it helps you narrow that down to the best of the best and deletes the, the extras. So that kind of is a cleanup method that you can do along the way too.

Okay, so you said there's 2 projects. There's the one on our phone, and there's the one of all the photo albums, all the, all the physical pictures. So what should we be doing with all of those?

So the physical pictures, you really want to have a digital backup of them. That's kind of the main thing, especially as I looked at people and I talked to people after the hurricane. Most of the Most— literally 90% of the photographs that people were sad they lost were things that the physical print itself wasn't as important as the memory. So having a digital copy of that would have preserved that memory. You know, is it, you know, your high school photos? And, you know, you'd be devastated right now if you found out all of the photos of, you know, the band trip were gone, or, you know, like the great times, your graduation ceremony. But did the print itself that you're holding on to is not The important part, it's the memory. So digitizing all of those is what I suggest everybody does and keeping that digital copy so you know that they're safe and that's its backup. In terms of the process for that, I always suggest that for saying it's just gathering all of them because most people keep them all over the place from, you know, there's still people, pictures at your parents' house or, you know, there are photos here and there and they're all over the place and they're scattered about. Collecting them all into one place is, is a task in itself. So I would suggest just getting all of them into one place. The second step is just putting them in order, getting them into chronological order. If you do that before you scan them, it just makes the process easier. And then once you've finished those steps, then just starting at the beginning and digitizing them. There's one scanner, it's sitting next to me here that I absolutely love. It's the Epson FastPhoto Scanner. And it's a feeder scanner where you can put a stack of photos in and it will scan. I think it says it does about 30 a minute, is, is it scan time? So you can take a year of photos from 1995 and have them all done in no time. So it's, it makes the process really, really quick. So I always recommend that. That is a great scanning option.

So I know what the moms are thinking. Who are listening. You know what moms say, but I don't have time for all of this. So what is your answer to the moms who are like, I'm overwhelmed without even thinking about doing this?

You know, so going back to the digital photos, that's exactly why I tell people just start with today, because it's not a difficult process if you start with today. And because if you are overwhelmed, it could be 10 years before you get to it. And now you can always say, I've got the last 10 years of photos organized. It's, it's always going to be the pictures before them. But if you don't start with today, you are just adding 10 years to the, the problem you're going to address down the road. So that I think is the biggest thing. And the other thing, I hate to be like scare tactic person, but I think just because I saw so many people heartbroken and I saw I mean, they lost— people that lost everything, it was the photos that crushed them the most. I mean, their couch and their bed are sitting on the curb. Their toaster is outside. But it was always the photos they were the most upset about. And we carry these insurance policies for all of these other things because, you know, we don't want to lose them. But this is an easy policy for our photos. And I will say, in addition, there are services that can do it for you too. It just costs a little bit of extra, you know, it just— it costs a little bit. It's It's— but again, like, if it came down to it, I think that it really would be a devastating loss for most people to know that their, their parents' wedding photos are gone forever. Like, they will never be passed down. And that's really— it's, you know, it's heartbreaking. And I will say, I, you know, I— this was after a hurricane where everything was destroyed in people's homes and they were addressing everything. I talk to people now almost daily that have lost photos, and sometimes it's just they were lost in a box in the move. I mean, they're, they're lost in lots of ways. It's not, it's not just some catastrophic natural disaster. It's I thought they were safe in the closet and they got moisture on them and they've all been destroyed. So it's, you know, they are fragile. And I, I think that, um, I think it's just really important to, to think hard about how you would feel if you didn't have them and try to take steps to maybe even just devote you know, 30 minutes a week to the project.

Really good advice. Now, you wrote Beyond the Storm. So tell us about your book and what you want us to take away from it.

Oh gosh. I, you know, um, it's, it's so, it's part, it's a memoir about my time living through the storm and so many of the things that I just didn't know were, I didn't know about. Storm surge and like what it would be like to live through any natural disaster. Like, I just, I didn't know what. And then the feelings that people had that I worked with, and I was helping the, the things that, the things that really they were struggling with. So I talk a lot about that. But with each chapter, I talk about the preventative measures anybody can take to make sure that their photos are safe. And I try to keep it as simple as possible as You know, you don't have to be tech savvy, like things that anybody can do, ways that anybody can accomplish this, even if you have limited time, limited resources, that you can prevent that heartache that I saw so many people went through. So I just, I hope my, my takeaway as— so it just, it's just coming out now. I'm just starting to hear from advanced readers and I'm loving when I'm hearing people say that they're, they're thinking about their photos now, that they're feeling a little motivated, they're feeling empowered to maybe address their photos, even if it's just in that little bits I talked about. That's really was what I had hoped for from the book. And I'm really hopeful that a lot of people are taking that away from it for sure.

Well, and I'm thinking about my friend's house. It was— I'm trying to remember how long ago this was, but her parents' house caught on fire. And she talks about all the memories that they lost. And you don't really think about it because we're not programmed. Like, I'm not programmed to think about— I have to— what if there's a fire? What if there's a disaster? We don't regularly think about this stuff. But she talks all the time about how, oh, I don't have that. It was burned. I don't have that. And I'm like, oh, I feel so bad for her.

Yeah. No. And it is heartbreaking. You know, hearing people when they reach out to me with their stories of situations. And, you know, sometimes like the flood, some of those photos could be saved. Sometimes, you know, fires that just— there's nothing to be saved. And often I talk to people too through fires that they also have water-damaged photos because it's, you know, the fire was part of the situation, but then the water to put out the fire. It's so— it's— it really is heartbreaking to hear.

Yes.

You know, and when you think about when you've gone through any kind of tragedy like that, like, to— it's so— after the hurricane, it was so much. I mean, you're dealing with FEMA and you're dealing with contractors and everything was urgent and everything was chaotic. And so this is just one thing that I often talk to people that they wanted to try to clean up their pictures, but they didn't, they couldn't, they just didn't have the time to do it at that moment. So it just, Yeah, being proactive is, is the only real solution for sure.

Well, and I told you before we started recording that I was doing a deep dive and I kept turning off the videos because I didn't want to learn before I talked to Krista. And one of the things was like top tools that we should have. Can you tell us? You might have mentioned some of them already.

Yeah, I love the scanner, the Epson FastPhoto Scanner. I even— I link it on my website and everything. I just love this scanner, and there really isn't anything comparable. I think the— there's other scanners that have feeders, but they're a fraction of the speed. So the speed of this— it also has— it color corrects pictures. So it'll take old, old photos. So sometimes, like, old photos from the '60s and '70s, the early color photos that the color shifted, it will fix that. But I even found, like, my pictures from the '90s that I don't think look terrible, but then you see them enhanced. So The scanner just— it automatically does some of these things that I love, which is another reason why I think it's just a fabulous tool. But that scanner is just great. There's just a simple little Kodak— it's called Kodak Slide-N-Scan for people that have slides. I talk to a lot of people that those are very popular. People were shooting a lot of slide film back in like the '60s and people who are inheriting their parents' slides. So that's an easy— you can sit— it's mindless. You can sit in front of the TV and scan slides in no time. But that's the Kodak Slide-N-Scan. I love that. That's another one I recommend a lot. Yeah, I mean, there's so many tools and gadgets. I have a free photo resource guide that I finally put together that I just started listing all of the items that I suggest in one place since I'm constantly, like, testing things and trying things out. So I made this free photo resource guide to just give everybody a complete list. I think it was— I think I'm over 70 tools at this point, but it's tools and gadgets and things. I even went— I went on Amazon and ordered 20 different picture frames just to like, like see the difference. Because you don't know when you're on Amazon, like, what is this a quality, like what is the weight, like what's it going to feel like? So I narrowed that down to like the ones I would purchase again from those. So just little tests and things like that, they're all on my, my photo resource guide.

Well, I appreciate you doing that for us because I don't want to figure out the technology, I'll tell you that.

Some of it I love. I mean, I just love it. I do, I do a photo lab comparison. I've done it for the past 2 years. I'm going to do it this summer. And so I order from a dozen different labs the exact same photos and the prints, and I compare the quality and the cost and all of those things. So, and that's in there too. But I enjoy that. I think it's so much fun. And I love like trying to pick out pictures that might be a challenge to print or things that are too dark, things that are— yeah. And comparing how the labs do to, to, to, you know, print the different photos.

Such a good idea. Well, and you were on, you know, Good Morning America, The Kelly Clarkson Show. I mean, you've done some really cool shows. I mean, what was, what was that experience like and what were you trying to get out to people when you did the shows?

Oh gosh. So Good Morning America was an online interview and that was neat. That was the very first one I did. That was really fun. The Kelly Clarkson Show was in person. That was when she— she's in New York now, but she was in LA at the time, so they flew me out out to LA and, um, brought me and one of the, um, a person that I had helped to restore her photos and, um, brought us out and did an interview in person. That was quite an experience because it was— we were flown to LA and put up in a hotel and—

oh cool—

did all the fun LA things. So that was quite a neat experience. But yeah, no, I've, um, I really— my goal— I talk about this in my book too— I— my goal with the publicity, where I was getting publicity for saving hurricane-damaged photos, was just to really— I wanted to spread awareness and make sure that if it reached one person, I felt like it was totally worth just trying to get that information out so that people realize how heartbreaking it is to lose photos and how fragile they really are.

Well, so I'm, you know, I'm gonna turn it back to me and be selfish again for a moment, but You know, I'm learning so much from you. So my daughter's having her bat mitzvah this summer, and we hired a photographer. And I know that this is like wedding season and like everybody is, you know, having special events, graduations. Can you give us some of your photography expertise? Like, what advice do you have for us with all of these special events?

Oh gosh, you know, hire a photographer you trust and let them do their job. I think that would be the thing I would say. I think sometimes people try to— I see that. I hear from other photographers too. Some of my— I've mentored other photographers, and I do hear that they're micromanaging the photographer is just kind of a challenge. If you have things you need, a list, I would provide a list ahead of time.

List.

The, the must-have photos. Don't be— I would say also don't go overboard with that list. Let the photographer be creative and capture the great moments of the bat mitzvah so that, you know, it's all— the whole story is told and it doesn't end up just being an entire, like, checklist of items. But, you know, make sure that you offer the list of these are the important family members and that. But yeah, I think the big thing, just hire somebody that you trust and let them do their thing and you're going to get some great photos.

Yeah, I know. I do get, I do get wrapped up in the list. I like that advice because I'm like, who's coming? Who do I need pictures of? And you don't, I don't wanna overwhelm the photographer either.

You know, and I can't speak for every photographer. I, I, I, for myself, I mean, a lot of my job and my goal is to use my creativity to capture the essence of that event. And the longer the list goes, the less of the essence of the event you get. So if you've hired a good photographer that you trust and you like their work, try to keep your list as minimal as possible. I mean, obviously there's important photos, like an event like that. You need to have all the special family photos. There's things that are special. But if you have— and I have, I literally more lately, I guess this is why it is on my mind, because more and more as time has gone by, I'm getting more lists that are like me and my cousin, just my cousin, my cousin and my neighbor, just my neighbor and my cousin, my 3 cousins on this side, my 2 cousins on that side. One family, you know, the large family photo, maybe just the cousins, just the immediate family. That's great. But when you get into these lists, and I'm not kidding, I've seen lists with 100 different combinations of people. Just dad, just mom and dad, just mom and dad with my brother, just my brother and dad. It's— yeah. So, but what's happening, and I don't know if people realize that, is when you're giving a list that's that long, your photographer is going to, you know, they want to make you happy, they want to accommodate you. But that with every extra picture, they're getting less of the essence of the event and the creativity you saw on their website and the, the fun energy that they were capturing at these other events. You know, that's being minimized because they're getting pictures of your cousin and your dad. So that would be, I guess, my, my advice as of lately is, you know, a list of 15 different combinations is great, but when you get much over that, it's, it's just a lot.

Really good advice. I knew you would be full of good advice. I mean, I'm taking away so much from this. And I think about this. I do think about this all the time. I think that we just need to like act on it. It's on my mind. I just need to take action.

Start with today. Tonight.

Start with today.

Download the Daily Delete app today. I think you'll love it. It's really, it's a fun app and you'll, it'll start helping you, um, just one day at a time.

And it doesn't delete without you okaying it deleting. Right?

Right. It, it sends it so you can, you can let it just do its thing. It, it sends it to a trash, then you have to empty your trash. So there's layers of, of it. And it also uses this AI technology that learns your preferences. So let's say, for instance, you have children's art that you have photographs of your children's art. It might recognize that as a you know, that's not necessary and it might try to delete it, but it will learn if you tell it, if you, you know, so if you work with it for a week after that, it just gets better and better knowing that you like, you know, you like pictures of your dog. You're never going to delete any of them.

So it will learn those things. Oh my gosh. I'm a little picture crazy. So this was a really good topic for me. And I know that the other moms listening totally agree with me. We all, my kids call me the momarazzi.

I love that. That's great.

So, I mean, I asked you so many questions. Is there anything important that you think that I didn't ask you to share?

Oh, gosh. No, I think we covered a lot of things, and I have a ton of information on my website too. Lots of the free photo resource guide is on there. I do offer a course that— it's a video course that walks through the steps of digitizing photos. So it really kind of breaks that down. And so if somebody really wants to get into that but needs kind of a, a course that they can do at their own pace, that's, you know, great for that. And then I, uh, other people I found just work great as groups or in person. We, um, myself and another photo organizing friend of mine are actually hosting a group cruise coming up that's, uh, we're gonna do photo organizing in the morning. We're gonna just kind of chat through, um, what needs to be done. Yeah. So that's in February of next year. Um, So I'm super excited about that. We've done in-person workshops, but this is the first that's going to be on a cruise. And I've just found in the past when we do these in-person workshops that people who love photos are— they're very like-minded. They're nostalgic. They're just, you know, it seems to be just warm people that collect. And so my friend and I were talking about this. We were like, we should do something that's like, it's that group of people. It's that positive, fun energy, but it's in a fun location. So that's where we kind of decided we'd do the cruise. And— That's amazing.

I know. I'm super excited about it.

But yeah, it'll be mornings of photo workshops. Organizing and afternoons of just, uh, hanging out and chatting and enjoying some fun locations with some like-minded people.

I love it. Well, tell everyone your website and all the places to find you.

Yeah, um, the website is thekristak.com, so that kind of connects to everything through the website. But my main— for social media, I'm— Instagram's kind of my main place where I, I like to post, and that's the dot Krista.K. But on there I share every day. I try to share different tips or just inspiration, just renders and that. And I'm always happy to answer questions on there or through my email too. I have people reaching out all the time with questions. There's no stupid questions. I'm always happy to answer any of them. So everybody's welcome to reach out to me there.

Well, I have absolutely loved talking to you and learning about being a little more organized with my millions and millions of photos. So thank you so much. For your time and your expertise today.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me. This is great.

This is Rebecca Greene, and I want to remind everyone to spend every day laughing, learning, and loving. Thank you for tuning in to the Winey Palooza podcast. If you like what you heard, please be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. While you are there, leave a review. I love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.

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