What are you doing with your personal photographs??
Are there millions of them stored on your hard drive?
Are they still on your memory card?
Do you have boxes of photographs that are unorganized, messy, and NEVER get looked at because they aren't in albums??
The importance of our photographs has really been on my mind lately.
Maybe it's because I just had a baby.
Maybe it's because I just photographed a graveside service for someone who SHOULD have a baby, but doesn't anymore.
Maybe it's because I've been reading Natalie's blog and crying my eyes out.
It's all brought me to the conclusion that your personal photographs are treasures....snippets of your life....collections of special moments.....pictures of people you love.....recollections of people who have passed on....they are PRICELESS!!
I felt inclined to do a post about actually DOING something with your photos because SO SO SO many times people come over to my house and say "Wow, I love that you have so many photos of your family printed and hanging on your walls. Mine are just on my computer."
So if I could inspire you in ANY way at all....DO SOMETHING with your photos. Get them off your hard drives and actually have them printed. Having an actual photograph printed ON photo paper is so much more valuable then just having it sit on your memory card or hard drive.
And if I could inspire you MORE I would say HANG SOME PHOTOS ON YOUR WALLS. It will bring you happiness. My heart feels happy EVERY TIME I see the photos of Rock and Violet on my walls. It really does.
And to keep on going, print your photos and put them in albums. Don't just throw them in a big messy box. No one looks at photos that are shoved in boxes and stored away in closets or dressers.
If it helps at all, I buy a lot of my personal family albums at Walgreens. I get them for around $12 an album and they hold 500 4x6 pictures. This is great for me because I have LOADS of photos. I also get all my point-and-shoot photos printed at Costco.
**Yes, I am a professional photographer and I DO have fancy albums full of beautiful pictures of my kids and family printed from professional photo labs.**
But I also have a ton of point-and-shoot, everyday style photos. In fact I have thousands of them. And the most practical thing for me to do with these is to do a monthly hard-drive cleanout and get them all printed at Costco and then throw them in the Walgreens albums.
Yes, it isn't fancy. But it works. And I really do believe a printed photo is so much better than a photo sitting on your hard drive or memory card. And whether it's a staged photo of my daughter with perfect hair, in a perfect dress, in a beautiful orchard vs. her in jammies with food smeared all over her face taken with my point-and-shoot crapper camera....THEY ARE BOTH valuable to me and they BOTH deserve to be printed.
So get busy:):) While you are stuck indoors this winter use the time to start printing and organizing your personal photos.
And yes, maybe hang a few on your wall too.
