With today’s technology, we take hundreds of pictures a month. It’s easy to pull out your phone, snap a quick picture and post it to your favorite social media site and forget about it until it pops up in Timehop next year.  Believe me, I’m guilty of this too, but I’ve made printing a priority this past year. Here’s why.

1. Technology fails. A computer can get a virus and crash. An external hard drive can get knocked down and break. Printed pictures help combat these losses. This is also a reminder to make sure you’ve archived your pictures in multiple places. I suggest off site back up services like backblaze, crashplan or iCloud in additional to multiple copies in your home. If you’ve got a fire proof safe, keep a hard drive of images there just in case, along with a copy of those most important prints.

2. Technology changes. If you’ve done all you can to back up all of your images, good for you! But what happens when that technology changes and you can no longer access those files. Think about floppy discs. All of that information is essentially lost as there is no way to use a floppy disc in our modern era. CDs are quickly becoming extinct too! In our home, all of the computers that we currently use came without disc drives. Our wedding pictures are sitting on a CD that I need to load and save some other way before I no longer can. Luckily, we did print those and even have some framed on our walls. 

But most importantly, for me: 

3. The joy on my kids faces when I put their picture on my walls is immeasurable. Seeing them selves on our walls gives them a sense of value and lets them know how much we cherish them. It’s also fun for them to see how they’ve grown and changed through the years. As I type this, I’m looking at my half finished gallery wall surrounding my TV in the living room. It’s the first thing you see as you walk in our house. I love that we’ve got family pictures up as well as individual images of each kid through out the years. Some of my favorites on this wall are little detail shots of them paired up with pieces of memorabilia in frames. We also keep a little bulletin board with favorite snap shots. 

Albums and picture books are also really fun for them! One of the favorite books in our house is a photo book from Blurb.com with Harper’s baby pictures! She loves seeing what she looked like as a baby and what we did as a family when it was just the 3 of us. 

Because printing your images is so important, and I want you to have the best quality, I’ve started including a print credit option with all collections this year. I’ll be sharing more ways to use your everyday snapshots and the photos from our sessions together on the blog this month and will send out a newsletter with a special offer later this month. Make sure you don’t miss out by signing up below!!