Print your Photos!

As a portrait and wedding photographer, I am asked with increasing frequency "Can I just get a disk of my pictures?" And my answer is "Yes, but why would you want to?"

With the increasing availability and quality of digital imaging, everyone takes pictures, all of the time. You may use a pocket sized camera, a camera on your phone, or a digital SLR that rivals the quality of professional equipment from just a few short years ago. You may use all three. And you are used to using those digital files, to share on Facebook, to Twitter, to share on photo sites, or to email to friends or family. Digital images are the medium of today. But are they the medium of tomorrow?

I have a photograph of my grandmother as a young girl. It is black and white, and a bit worn around the edges. The contrast has faded. Of course it has. It is 100 years old. I can hold in my hands this treasured piece of my history, and I will share it with my children, and their children. If cared for gently, it might even be around in another 100 years. Photographs were rare in the early decades of the twentieth century, and each image was treasured and carefully preserved.

Fast forward to today. I am going to pick on a friend of mine, because she has provided me with the perfect example. She just purchased a new external hard drive for storage. She transferred to this drive, 57,000 photos. 57,000! If one were to view these images at a rate of one per second, it would take 950 minutes, or almost 16 hours. Now,  just to be sure I am not really picking on one person, I would say that while she probably has more images than the average person, she's certainly not alone in her enjoyment of photography, and her love for preserving treasured family memories.

I am old enough to have spent more years using a film camera than a digital one. My children span this rapid evolution in image capture. My daughter's first camera used film; my son, only three years her junior, has never seen a film camera. My own family albums reflect this shifting technology. I have volumes of 4x6 prints from the years when I used a film camera - that was the only way to see your pictures! My kids and I will cozy up on the sofa every year or two to relive those memories  - Remember when I was a crow for Halloween?! Remember when I got a kitten for my birthday?! Once digital cameras became viable and affordable, my albums sit empty, and my images languish in mysterious locations, someplace on my hard drive, having survived transfers from old computer to new more times than I can count.

At least I am one of the lucky ones. My files have survived. Most of them anyway. But disks deteriorate, hard drives fail, file formats become obsolete. My son, my youngest child, will graduate from high school next month. One of my projects this year is to locate and organize those old files, choose the keepers, and print them. I will fill in the last pages of my albums, and my family's story, up until now, will be complete.

What does this have to do with clients asking about digital files? Of course everyone uses digital files, all the time. That is the modern method of image sharing. But when you have chosen to make an investment in professional photography, what do you want those photos to do for you? Do you want to enjoy them every day? Do you want to pass them down to your children, and their children, to preserve this day in the history of your family? Do you want an archival product that will survive for generations?

I know it's a commitment to schedule your portrait session. Haircuts, the perfect outfit, scheduling... your investment goes well beyond your session fee. You have chosen to capture a time in your life, in your family's lives, that you want to treasure and preserve. Of course you can just have a disk of your images. But really, why would you want to?

And while we're talking about it... Pull out those disks and files of your family's photos. Choose your favorites. And print them. Your family will thank you.