WHY I Believe in Printing with Purpose and Intention
It's no secret, I LOVE printed products! I always have, even before I was a professional photographer. When I was growing up I had a 110mm camera and then a 35mm that I photographed EVERYTHING with. I even set up the cats, using teddy bears as props and a sleeping bag as my backdrop to photograph them. Ok, so maybe from those early days you wouldn't have bet money on that I would become a professional one day, but this is where my love of photography began! But the pinnacle wasn't until I got my prints back from being developed. Oh, the agonizing wait to see them! I would put them in albums, tape them all over my walls, and make collages. Holding THE PRINT was the most exciting part! I still have all of the prints from those early days and if you ask my kids, I'm old as dirt so it's a true testament that prints stand the test of time.
12 year-old me nailed that composition, the exposure, focus and look at that set-up!! haha! So glad I had this 27 year old print in an album so that I could scan and share it with you!
Print Your Photos
Enter the digital camera age, circa about 2005ish. A few years in I realized, where I hadn't been limited to 24 or 36 exposures I had thousands of digital files. I had them all crammed onto disks at a terrible quality (I was clueless at the time on proper digital storage). I kept telling myself I would go back someday and look through them to print. But then I just kept adding thousands more digital files each year. Does this sound at all familiar?!
I recently watched a documentary on the singer Ed Sheeran. Him and another writer named Fiona Bevan wrote the song "Little Things." They recorded the demo together on Ed's phone and then his phone was stolen! 2 YEARS later Fiona found the original song that had been written down when they created it. The song went on to be one of the most popular songs sung by the band One Direction. PRINT had saved this smash hit.
Here is a really sad part also involving how we shouldn't trust technology to be the keepers of our heirlooms. I had switched to a digital camera near the birth of my son. All of his newborn, baby and child photos were taken with a 1 MP camera, stored as low-resolution files on CD's. They weren't printed because I had been so overwhelmed with the number of photos I just kept telling myself I'd go back and print later. I had fooled myself into trusting digital storage, that the digital files would just be there forever whenever I wanted to look at them. For his 15th birthday I tried to track down some images to print or even to just share. I no longer have the means to print from a disk from my computer and even if I could I had saved them as the absolute smallest file size so the quality would have been awful. Strike ONE! I remembered blogging was a new thing at the time and I had blogged some of his images. I pulled up the old blog and the images were all gone!!! I had run out of storage somehow and the site had erased all of my images. Strike TWO!!
Cue panic digging through totes in the basement. I had taken my kids to a portrait studio in a Walmart of all places after he was born. I had chosen a print package of a couple of the images. The compositions were TERRIBLE, no posing at all. The photographer was probably a teenager that they showed how to push a button. But at least I had SOMETHING because I had a PRINT...somewhere. Through manic searching, I became so frustrated with myself with the lack of organization. I had printed but I didn't print with intent and purpose. My tote box of prints was a hot mess and the baby photos couldn't be found. Strike THREE!
Print Your Photos With Intent
I'm absolutely sick to my stomach that as a young Mom I didn't print these precious memories and organize them. Through life experience, I've determined that my favorite form of printing is albums. I love albums because they are like a good library book to me. So organized, you can feel them, hold them, the sensory touch of the paper and even the smell of the ink (I'm a HUGE nerd, I know). Looking at images on your phone is like an E-reader experience but a quality printed album is like a really good old-school book. It's a whole different sensory experience. Plus, with beautiful heirloom quality albums, they also make a statement in your home. People are just drawn to them. They want to touch and look at them.
When we look at products together when planning a portrait session, the album is my most popular product sale because I love them!
I want to share my experience with being able to pick up a printed album of a loved one during a time of loss. I've had several loved ones pass away and one of the first items we go looking for is printed photos of that person. I can't explain the frustration, sadness and how the last thing you want to be doing is frantically scrolling through a phone, hard drive or box looking for a photo "good enough," trying to figure out how to get a print made in time. I was attending the funeral of a woman from my church when the night before an SOS went out saying no one had a photo of her. I thought, "HOW SAD!" I remembered that years before I'd taken a portrait of her, was able to print and literally walked into her services as it began and was able to contribute this image. PRINT IS POWERFUL. What print will represent YOU?
Print Your Photos with Purpose
I BELIEVE in printing your memories. It's not a sales tactic when you visit my studio when we talk about print products. I know the IMPORTANCE of printed portraits and I want to help you! One of the first questions I'll ask you is, "what do you want TO DO with your portraits?" It's not enough to print just to print. Print with intent and purpose. For organization, storytelling and the full experience that is easily passed down through the generations, an album is the way to go. If you want to invest in a piece of art; a canvas or framed and matted print is great. If you like to individually hold and flip through each print, a folio box or keepsake box is perfect. How you like to relive your memories, how you want your memories cherished is up to you.
I challenge you to think differently than just asking for the digital's only when hiring a photographer. I want you to have an idea of what art you would like to display in your home, what printed products you would like to give as gifts, think about the investment an album is to your family. I encourage you to think differently than the, "I'll print later" mindset. Learn from my mistakes! Life is busy and I'm here to design those albums for you, get those memories on paper and help you to be able to actually look at and enjoy your photos.
Below are a few of the beautiful print products I can help you design. They are heirloom quality, so you will be sharing these with your great grand-children. Let's print with purpose and intention!
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