“The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score and the print is the performance” – Ansel Adams
Okay, so maybe we’re not dealing with negatives when you have a shoot with me but the sentiment still applies. The shift to digital photography happened a long time ago now and as a result of that (and of course having smart phones in our back pockets) we are taking more photographs than ever before. The sadness is is that it is all too easy to leave these memories on your phones and computers. Have a think about it. How many photographs do you have stored on your phone or computer? Then have another think. How many of these photographs do you actually look at on a daily basis? How many of them do you look at over the course of a year? My guess is that the answer to this is actually very few. We all lead incredibly busy lives and once those photographs are way back in your photo stream, lost in the thousands of other photographs, we actually don’t look at them often enough.
When you hire me for photography shoots, you are investing money into professional photographs capturing special times in your life. It seems such a shame to then have those photographs sitting on a computer or phone somewhere, only to be looked at once in a while, perhaps not even that!
There are so many reasons to display your printed photographs in your home. They provide unique and interesting interior decoration, they are a constant reminder or your precious memories, family and friends can enjoy them too when they pop around to visit and so on. My photography style is such that we capture very natural real life memories, the candid moments along with the a couple more formal images. I can’t think of anything nicer than having that cheeky chocolate covered face or that look between loved ones displayed on the wall.
And did you know that there are no guarantees that storing your photographs digitally will ensure that they are there to look at and enjoy for years to come by you and by future generations? Remember CDs? And did you also know that every time you open a jpeg file it deteriorates very slightly? You won’t notice it at first but eventually you will notice that your precious memories are just not of the same quality as they once were.
Having your photographs on display to be looked at regularly and having photo albums to flick through really is a mood booster. And I promise you that one day your children will love having tangible photographs to enjoy with you and one day with their children remembering “the olden days” and the fun times they had getting up to all sorts of mischief!
