5 Reasons I Personally Print My Images

I know right know we are right in the middle of a time where we have access to everything at the touch of our fingers!  Everything we need is at an instant digital access. It’s on our computers, our laptops, our Ipads and it all transfers over from the cloud right onto our phones.  It’s easy and it’s amazing and it’s perfectly convenient, especially when it comes to our priceless family images!  Trust me, I love the fact that I can upload my client family galleries and my own personally galleries to PASS and then also have the app on my iphone where I can instantly e mail them or share them right on instagram whenever I want!  It’s amazing and it’s something I don’t take for granted one second of the day.  However, with all the greatness of technology now, we all tend to forget about the incredible option to print our images!  I know a lot of us talk about it.  We all want to print our images and plan to print them.  Some of us (me included) have designated space on our walls where the perfect family portrait is meant to be hung;  it’s just well… with all the instant digital access and our busy lives and jam packed schedules, we forget.  Has that happened to you?  Does it happen to you?  Are there images sitting on your computer or living on your hard drive at home that you keep meaning to print but it just hasn’t happened yet?!

Or is there something else that holds you back from printing images?  Does it seem to outdated?  I was talking with a girlfriend of mine the other day on my couch about this very topic.  My house is filled with pictures.  Some are in picture frames all over our walls, on shelves, and in just about every nook and cranny you can find.  Other images you can find decorating our fridge or really just even lying around the house waiting to find a home.  My girlfriend laughed and asked me why I constantly print my images when I can just file them away on the computer and then call them up whenever I like!  I knew then and there that I had to explain myself.

For me, I have 5 certain reasons why I print my images:

1.   Provides me a way in which I can physically hold them and touch them helps me see the beauty in my real life!  When Linc was first born and I was in the midst of post partum depression my camera and my photography was truly what helped me turn things around.  If you want to read more about my whole experience, you can check out these blog posts where I write about everything in full detail (part one and part two ).  Keeping my camera up and shooting my real life for all the raw and endearing moments, the truthful moments, and then being able to print them out and reflect on those moments helped me see how amazing our life was!  Beauty lies in the chaos and in the mess and I absolutely love that.  I found my passion in that!  In fact, in this season I am in now, this age of 4 year old all boy-ness, I still need to see that “real” day in and day out of motherhood!  The art of actually printing those images though and being able to feel them with your own fingers and not just staring at the computer screen;  it’s bring everything full circle.  For me, it allows me to feel the image and see the truth of the moment in a different light!  Printing breathes life into an image in a way that the computer screen or the iphone screen just can’t.
2. Allows me to connect to family who lives farther away:  I like to choose a few images each month to print out and have them sent directly to my house.  Once the images arrive, I carefully select which images I want to keep for myself and which images I want to send to certain family members that live in different states!  This is so fun for me!  Sometimes I know I’m going to have order double or triple of certain images and others it’s always fun to choose who will simply adore each image and who might want another!  I usually like to write a handwritten note or send the images off with a care package for our families that live out of town.  I love to do this especially monthly because it’s a way for our families to feel connected to one another.  It’s nice for them to be able to see Linc’s growth and all the changes he goes through and what we are doing with our time here in Florida.  I know our families can connect with us on facebook, the blog, or through social media;  but it’s so nice to receive mail!  Everyone loves to get mail in the actual mailbox. Plus, (once again) it’s nice to have something to hold onto!
3. Having a physical body of work:  As a photographer and a creative it’s incredible to actually see your work physically in print!  That sounds so silly, I’m sure, but at least for me actually seeing my hard work and my creativity and my passion hanging on someone’s wall… ya’ll it’s the best feeling in the world!  Even if it’s my own wall… it just feels amazing!  It takes me back to that moment in time and gives me all the feels!  Printing your images gives that moment life outside of the computer screen, and yes it does give it life!  Somehow and I don’t know why, but somehow it makes it feel real again.  It’s like the velveteen rabbit!  You can touch it and feel it and somehow it just becomes that moment again.  I feel the same way (sort of) when I see it on the computer screen.  Yes, I am taken back to the moment and yes I love it all the same, but for me there is nothing like walking past the canvas I have in my hall of Linc splashing in the Disney water at the Casey Jr. Play area and feeling the leather wrap.  It’s big and the colors are vivid and I can absolutely just get lost back in that moment again on that very first day we all visited Disney!
4. Gifting:  I absolutely love to gift prints!  I know how much printed images mean to me (I mean goodness, if you don’t think I’m a weirdo about it by now), so I adore being able to bring that joy to others.  Sometimes in the midst of a tough season being reminded of what you have in your life in print form of a beautiful moment is just what someone needs!  As photographers we are able to do just that.  In fact, we are charged with it!
5. Bringing the stories and legacy for Linc:  I am always blown away and it just melts my heart to see the look on Linc’s face as he remembers the moments of his life!  These are legacy pieces that we are building for our families and if they are just sitting on hard drives or computers they aren’t truly able to fulfill their purpose.  Images need to be held and touched by big hands but especially by little hands!  Linc loves to hold our prints.  He loves to flip through his own albums and hear his own stories.  He begs to read them over and over again.  He loves to help pick out frames and find spaces on the walls where our “memories belong” or so he says now.  These my friends are exactly why we as photographers spend so much time capturing images for you!  This is why I love what I do and why I enjoy photography so much.  Why I am so passionate about family photography.  Images are to be captured and printed and to be so worn out that we know them by heart!

Friends:  at the end of the day whether you print or hoard on computers and hard drives, as long as you know your stories so intimately that each moment captured is truly a reflection of that time and it’s visited so often it feels worn out in your heart…. it’s a job well done!!!