I can’t stress how important printing your photographs is! Your children in 20 years are not going to have a way to see the images that are hiding on your hard drive unless you print them. Storing images on CDs? New computers these days don’t come with CD drives anymore. I hate to break it to you but technology is constantly evolving. CDs will soon be like floppy disks. Your kids are gonna look at them and think they are shiny coasters. They will have no idea what they are or what to do with them because they won’t be used anymore. So don’t just keep your images saved to CDs… PRINT THEM!!!
OH, you don’t need to print them because the are saved to your computer?! Great, keep them safely hidden in your hard drive where they can be enjoyed by… WHO? YOU?? What a waste of memories! Seriously, how often do you pull them up and show them off? I can guarantee not as often as you would if your beautiful pictures were displayed in an album or scrapbook. Or displayed as a piece of gorgeous wall art to be enjoyed every day. That’s right, I said ART!!
Photography is an art! People aren’t printing their images anymore. They are missing out on important and precious memories.
I can’t tell you how often my family looks back at “baby photos”. We smile, laugh and appreciate the memories the photographs depict. We cherish them! The sad truth though is that it’s mostly only photos from years and years ago. In the more recent years not many photos have made it into albums, frames or the ever favorite, Photo Box! YES, I am guilty of it too! BUT, I am making a conscious effort to change.
Since I have had Hadley I print more pictures than I have in years. I want to have those photographs to share with her when she’s older. I want to give her the gift of memories. Allow her to enjoy the photographs. To hold them. To feel them. Not just skim through them on a computer or have them as a box of CDs.
Does this frame look familiar? It made an appearance in Hadley’s Birthday Post.
Well, to me, this isn’t just a frame. It’s a time capsule that hangs on my wall and I love it. It is our Hadley Frame, and every time she has a photo session with Aunt Tiff we print our favorite photograph in an 11×14 to hang inside. For Hadley’s birthday we updated the frame with an image from her 3-year-old shoot. But that isn’t my favorite part. My favorite part is taking all of the photographs out and reminiscing over the older photos. Oohing and ahhing over my baby girl. Looking at how little she used to be. Comparing the photos to see how she has changed. How could I ever do this if I never printed these photos?? These are images I don’t see until I update the Hadley Frame. I don’t go on the computer to search for these images. I could, but I don’t! That’s the sad part about storing all your images and not physically printing them. You don’t enjoy them as often as you could. Such a waste, if you ask me!
I don’t just print an image for the Hadley Frame. I print out all of my favorites… which lately has been all of them 😉 ! If I don’t, there are so many memories that could be eventually forgotten. How sad! I don’t want to forget that during her picnic photo shoot, Hadley fed her hotdog to Minnie, or the faces she made that day and now I never will. I have the printed photographs to enjoy for years and years to come. With Hadley, and possibly her children some day. 
So print your photographs! Don’t let your memories fade away. Don’t let them become buried on your computer, never to be enjoyed again. In twenty years, you’ll be glad you took this tiny piece of advice.
Happy Printing,
xx Heather
