Printed photographs vs digital files

I have been wanting to write this little (it is long but worth reading) article for a while as I think its important for me to share why I do not offer digital images any more.

Here is why:

Above are the photographs of my grand-grandparents. They are over 100 years old. I think they were taken around 1905 in St Petersburg, Russia. These photographs have been treasured and passed within my family for a few generations now. They are worn and faded, yet I can say it’s the most valuable thing in my family possessions. We moved places, we had a fire destroying the whole apartment yet these photographs survived the time and space, outlived people. Any relative I have always asks for copies and always want to see the originals, to touch them, to smell them – this is how it is valuable. Nobody comes and asks oh can see that ring your grandmother left you. No, because its not important, its nothing, it just a material thing. But these photographs even created some grumpiness in our family because people wanted to have them too. My point is that a good quality photograph of you or your family is priceless! Nowadays, how lucky we are living in the world where everybody can take photos instantly and see them immediately. Its big, its huge, it amazing! We take hundreds, thousands photos on the phone, cameras, watches and even keyrings have mini cameras on them. But how often do we look though all these images? Do you even remember what images you have taken 5 years ago, last year, last month? Do you know where they are? Do you even have them? I personally have thousands of images I taken with my little travel camera and phone. I loaded them onto the computer and I don’t think I ever sat and looked though them. One day maybe, too busy, too many, don’t even remember where they are. Images on disks or USB sticks are even worse – I have no idea where my disks are. I have clients who came to me after several years from their session saying they lost their images. Luckily I still kept them but a photographer can’t keep them forever, we move to different places or different dimensions, we change professions and so on. I would say there is 90% chance that your photographer would not have the images of the session that taken place several years ago. It’s all lost! People say “well physical things get lost, house burn down, flooded or destroyed by an earth quake” Yeah unfortunately it happens. But how many chances that your house will burn or fall down? Not many. You can lose the album with all your photos somewhere during a move, but most likely it is displaced and sitting somewhere in the box which will be discovered eventually, if not by you, but maybe by your children or grandchildren to their delight. With digital photographs your chances of losing them are much higher, its very big! The biggest threat to digital photographs is a device failure. Computers, laptops, tablets, disks have tendency to failure losing all your files. My husband is a an IT engineer, he gets phone calls from people asking for help to recover their data from a failed device on daily basis. Some files can be recovered, some not. The most asked data to recover is photographs. People go into panic if they can't recover their photographs. As I mentioned before I have many digital photographs which I never look at. But there is a little old album with prints from my daughters childhood (there was no digitals at the time) sitting on the shelf beside my desk. I love looking though them and do it quite often. I treasure this album and Im delighted I can pass it on to the future generations.

Another modern way of storing your pictures - in the "cloud". I know many people who download their photos on social media and various on-line galleries. Whilst it might be safe short term, what about your grandchildren? I cant imagine that Face Book will exist in 50 years and your future family will have access to your old photos.

Of course in this age of instant photography when we thousands of images, its not possible to print them all. But as little as 10 printed images a year will create good photographic library to be appreciated by your family.

This is why I feel that providing my clients with physical products gives them much better value than just giving a USB stick with digitals. The materials used in my prints and wall art is the quality that will last generations!

#printedphotographs #oldphotographs #antiquephotographs