Preserve your summer memories now (you can thank us later!)

Here’s a fun estimate: in less than two minutes today, more pictures are taken than were taken in the entire 19th century. Admittedly, photography wasn’t really practical until 1839, but even if we’re only counting 61 years, people today are snapping at a rate approximately 19 million times faster.

Wow! That’s a lot of photography! But… what are we doing with those images?

Let me put it this way. I bet you did something amazing this summer. Maybe you finally went on a trip you’ve been dreaming about for years, practicing a language and devouring guidebooks. Maybe you connected with a previously unknown tribe in the Amazon (okay, probably not). Maybe you moved closer to your parents and had a lot of time to reconnect and have fun together. Whatever it was, if you took photos, they deserve more than to simply languish on a hard drive! Here are a few thoughts on what that “more” could look like…

Bet you didn’t expect that one from a print shop… 😉 In all seriousness, however, I haven’t encountered a better way to enjoy a large quantity of pictures than good old-fashioned prints. You can give copies to the people with whom you made the memories, pass them around a table so everyone can look at once, and put them all into an album that makes reminiscing from the couch incredibly convenient—a value that only grows over time. In August, I visited my extended family in Germany, and one of the many great moments was when one of them grabbed a few photo albums from their trips to the USA in the ’90s. It was great to see a sort of alternate-reality version of what we were doing, and seeing a few new photos of myself as a wee lad was pretty fun, too.

Another benefit to printing your photos? It’s a great part of an air-tight archival strategy. High-quality photographic prints can last decades, and if something were to happen to your digital backups, you could scan the prints to recover your most precious image files.

Of course, you don’t have to stop at making simple, small prints. Thanks to the magic of technology, it’s easier than ever to put the people and places you love on almost anything you’d like.

• Custom photo books can be quick and inexpensive or elaborate heirlooms. Take full control of your presentation and distill your photos into a book that will recreate, in a compact form, the full emotional impact of an event.
• Face-mounted acrylic prints are the perfect centerpiece in a room with modern, clean style.
• Natural wood prints, on the other hand, feel as warm and cozy as the summer sun.
• Mugs & water bottles are a great way to relive your best memories every day, or to give a little reminder to your cohorts in happiness.
• Click here for even more! Cards, calendars, t-shirts—your imagination is the limit. Don’t see exactly what you’re looking for? Leave a comment below or shoot an email via the contact form at this link and I’ll see if we can find a way to make your vision a reality.

We tend to talk a lot about the role of “archiving” as it pertains to old photos, as well as about cool things to do with your freshest, most beautiful photos, but we rarely mention the area in which the two concepts cross over one another.

In other words, are you archiving the hundreds (or thousands) of photos you are producing today? We all produce plenty of photos that could be comfortably lost to time—but don’t forget that you are also shooting the images that will someday be as important to you and your progeny as your family archive is to you today. Would you rather take a little time to preserve your special moments properly now, or leave a major project for some future archivist? Or, even worse, lose the record entirely?

I hate to interject a doomy-and-gloomy note, but it is impossible to discuss the concept of archiving your imaging without invoking the specter of the consequence of failing to do so: namely, irretrievable loss of the little crystallized moments of our lives we call photos. Young and naïve, I once lost an entire summer’s worth of photos after my computer’s hard drive crashed with no backup, so I can attest to the pain of the experience. Don’t do it! And it’s not just digital photos that are endangered. Physical media of all kinds are in danger of fading, damage, loss, or just plain obsolescence over time. No single medium is a safe back-up plan, as each has its own weaknesses. Your best protection is redundancy! As mentioned above, printing digital photos is just as important as digitizing old printed photos when it comes to longevity. Here’s are a few final tips to successfully keeping your story alive.

Come in and see us! An imaging expert will be ready to help you make the most of your memories.