Technology today makes finding an image on our hard drive or the internet relatively simple … but I still encourage my clients to make prints of their images. Be it large ones for the wall, desk size for your office or albums to browse through with loved ones, I recommend prints to share photos.
Why Prints?
You are probably asking why. Why in the world would I pay for prints when I can just get the digital files and upload them to my computer or social media pages to share with family and friends? Well the answer is this, uploading images to your social media is about the here … the now. Your friends and family will look at the photos once and they’ll be forever forgotten. Prints on the other hand are about preserving memories for our future generations. A paper print or album is a future family heirloom which will be handed down for generations. No one pulls out old negatives from 1950 to see what great-grandpa and grandma looked like when they first met, we pull out the prints and albums which have been passed down from mother to daughter and father to son.
The same applies to digital files. Digital files are the modern day negative; prints are the heirloom we hold onto, the item we run back into a burning house to save.
Ask yourself this question; 50 years from now, when sitting down with your grandchildren to show them your wedding or your high school friends, how will you show them the photos?
Why you don’t want ONLY digital files.
Will future computers / tablets be available to read the media storage devices of today? NOPE. One perfect example of how fast technology changes is cassette tapes. We all remember them, but do we have a tape player? Or what about floppy discs? I still have a few lying around the house … but it’s been more than a decade since I’ve owned a computer capable of reading this antiquated media. Fifty years from now, you’ll want to pull an album off the shelf, gather the grandchildren around the couch and start reminiscing right away. You will not want to rummage through the attic or basement hoping to find a device capable of reading a thumb drive or CD.
People don’t hang DVD’s or thumb drives on the wall. Images stir emotions in us. Those emotions are why we love the image and carry copies around in our wallets or purses. On a moment’s notice we can pull the print out and hold it in our hands … Reigniting fading emotions. Floppy discs, CD’s and thumb drives just don’t give you the immediate warm fuzzy feeling that a paper print does.
Passwords
Everybody forgets passwords. Social media sites will come and go. Many email accounts are fleeting. I don’t think I remember my first email address, let alone the password. How about MySpace? I bet there are some great memories that are lost forever. Don’t let that happen with your photos. Your grand kids deserve to see their heritage.
Printing photos may seem like an expensive luxury, but the priceless memories the prints contain are well worth the expense. If you’re hiring a professional photographer to take your portrait, you’re hiring him / her to capture this brief moment in time. This time in your life meant enough to hire a professional; why wouldn’t you have prints made?
