This is Why I Print My Images

A printed image has a larger impact on the viewer than one shared digitally.

Spoiler alert, it’s not because I’m old.

I remember as a kid sitting in our family room looking through photo albums my mother had carefully pulled together to document the events of our lives.  I would flip through those plastic covered pages of photos and reminisce about the events she had documented or ask questions about ones I had forgotten about.  It allowed me to spend time remembering things I would otherwise have forgotten about.  My mother was able to pass along stories of friends and family through those photos.  Some of the memories I still recall from my childhood are because I had that time to revisit them through photos.  As our lives become more hectic and crammed with more activity the harder it becomes to recall all those past events.

Let’s be honest - I don’t print most of my photos.  There are thousands of personal photos I’ve collected over the years. I save them off (and back them up!) to external storage.  I have years of digital images on CD’s and hard drives and various cloud storage sites.  Theoretically saved for posterity.  But guess what - laptops no longer come with CD drives as standard.  So how do I view those images?  And how the heck would I be viewing them 50 years from now?  I’ve already got external hard drives with old port styles that require hard to find converters to connect to my laptop.  Technology changes so quickly these days that you have to stay on top of migrating your old images to the latest memory format every few years.  I end up spending more time migrating my images to new storage than I ever do looking at the photos.

But here’s the thing about all those files stored digitally.  Besides the fact that I can’t even access the ones on CD’s until I ship them off to be converted, I rarely take time to sit at my computer (or my phone) to just sit and view the pictures.  I spend most of my workday sitting in front of a computer.  At the end of the day I need a break from the screens.  On the rare occasion that I do pull them up for viewing it requires people to sit around as a captive audience to view them.  Maybe your kids are different, but my kids don’t have the attention span to sit on the couch for 30 minutes watching pictures from years ago.  They would rather be watching YouTube or playing a video game.

A few years ago we moved into a new house and I suddenly found myself with more wall space than our previous home.  I committed to using that extra wall space to display artwork that was meaningful to us as a family.  I started printing images of us as a family, some of my favorite images of the kids, and some of our pictures from vacations we had taken.  It’s amazing how those images are now part of the fabric of our everyday lives.  As we walk through a room our eyes fall on those pictures and the memories from those moments are brought to mind every day.  The kids see images of us all together, or pictures I’ve taken of them that I love and they are reminded they are part of a family that loves them and values them.

Every. Single. Day!

Once I realized this I started printing albums of specific trips we had taken.  Every now and then my kids or I will pull out an album and flip through it, remembering the vacation we took together.  We look at these photos in albums more often than we ever do the digital images sitting on a storage device that is shoved into a drawer in a desk.

Flipping through these albums, or seeing the images around the house help my kids feel more connected, more a part of a family, and help them focus on positive memories that make up who they are and part of the fabric of who they will become as they grow up.

It is unrealistic to print every image you have.  However certain photos deserve to be printed.  Certain milestones that should be celebrated, specific memories that you want to bring a smile to your face even on the most frustrating days, and most importantly the photos of your family that bring everyone together and remind them how much they are loved.

This is why I focus on prints, albums, and art for your walls from your session. You can have digital versions to share on social media but it is not the same as filling your home with beautiful images of those you love.