Today’s Picture, Tomorrow’s Treasure: Printing Your Photos

Today’s Picture, Tomorrow’s Treasure.  Here’s to Printing your Photos.

My office is full of photos as you might expect, those little moments that I don’t ever want to forget.  Little snippets of time from three generations of Michaelsons, the beach in Hawaii, my Grandfather holding my newborn daughter, my daughter at 18 months giving me a kiss, my sweet baby running through a field of flowers in a yellow dress.  They are forever documented and placed in my office, my favorite memories.

Yesterday my daughter and I visited my Mom in my hometown of Ladysmith and she had just returned from spending a couple of days with my Aunt & Uncle as they sort through years upon years worth of boxes of images and love letters that my Grandparents left behind.  See, my Grandfather was a bit of a photographer too and I guess you could be sure to say that is where I got this hankering for documenting life.  A vigor for putting life in frames you could say.

Looking back my Grandmother has been gone a little over 16 years, my Grandfather just over 1.  We laid them to rest 15 years apart to the day, side by side.  Now here we are able to still reflect on the life and love that they had with those boxes stuffed brim to the top full of images and words.  It’s a lost art, I’m sad to say.  Although they spent years apart while my Grandpa was away in the war I wonder in 60 years what my grandchildren will have to look back on, what boxes they will have to dig through to find out more about what I was like when I was 20-something, 30-something, and on and on.  Will they find an old iPhone that no longer will power up?  Or will they find a box brimming with diaries, love letters and images.  I hope it’s the latter.  And let me be completely honest with you here, I don’t print everything either.  I’m so very guilty of letting images sit on external hard drives and on my phone just waiting to be put to paper or in an album.  I’m so very guilty of it… but yet that will change.  Want to know the reason why? These two tiny images.

This was one of the little pieces that my Mom brought home with her in a box full of these memories.  I did a bit of research on them and they are actually taken in an early photobooth (circa the 1940’s) called a Photomatic made by the International Mutoscope Corporation (you can read more about one that was previously for sale by clicking the link).  The image is housed in a little tin frame and are now somewhat of a collectible item.  What I found most interesting about the advertising on the outside of these booths is that it said “Today’s Picture, Tomorrow’s Treasure.”  How more on point could they have been?

One of the things that most people ask me when they inquire about my photography services is: “Do the images come on a USB?”  While I DO sell those images to you whether that be in a wedding collection or that you purchase them after your senior session I want you to really sit down and think about printing those images.  I couldn’t count how many times I’ve had my previous wedding clients tell me that they honestly haven’t even touched their disc or USB after it was mailed to them.  So, they planned and planned and planned for their big day and then in the end didn’t even print those images?

YES.  It’s true and it’s sad.

So why don’t we sit back and rethink the importance of things that we can not only enjoy now, but things that our children and grandchildren can love and find 75 years from now in a dusty box.