Why you should print your photographs.

Photographs are important to us.

They are our personal story, a timeline of our lives filled with faces and places that we love, they document the story of our lives.

I lost my Grandad in March 2019 and my great Aunt the following December, the last of the older generation of my family, gone. All we have left of them now is the photographs they took. The photos they left behind were their legacy.

My grandad fought in the Korean War in the 1950’s, he never spoke about it much but he did take photographs while he was there and going thought them after his death gave me insight into what it was like for him.

I had the job of going through their photographs for their funerals and they gave me such a view into their lives and what was important to them. My grandad would take a photograph of his garden every year as it was his pride and joy. My great aunt’s most prized possession was a photograph of her late husband, my grandad’s brother.

Think about that for a moment. More often than not, it’s not until it’s too late that we wish we had more physical, printed photographs of our loved ones and our happy memories.

So the question is… are you actively documenting the important parts of your life?

Do you print enough of your photographs or, do you take a photograph then let it sit in the cloud or on social media indefinitely?

A printed photo becomes something our future children can touch and look closely at. It’s displayed, it’s on the wall, it’s on the desk, it’s inside an album. You don’t need to search through the various files, folders and deep archives to find the images that you took years ago in the computer.

Its there! Printed and hung on the wall or in an album. You can walk past it every day and be reminded instantly of those happy times.

It creates conversations about what our families were like when they were younger. Photographs help paint a picture of how our loved ones were once like us and they also help bring us closer to them.  

We’re taking more photographs than ever before thanks to smartphones and digital cameras but it’s what you do with them after that truly matters. If they’re a file simply stored in the cloud then it’s meaningless.

Photographs are meant to be seen, not hidden away.

Holding a photograph in your hand makes the photo ‘real’. The feel of the paper triggers a more emotional response in the brain than looking at it on a screen. This is why it’s so important to print your images.

With today’s technology, it’s easier than ever before to capture memories. Don’t lock them away. Let them be seen every day and allow the good times to be remembered time and time again.