What do you do with your photos?

To print or not to print?

that is the question...

With the developments of digital photography we all take many, many more photographs than ever before.  Each capturing a fleeting moment in our lives to be revisited when scrolling through our mobile phones.  With so many images the question is, what do we do with them?  I know many people who simply leave them on the memory card that they were captured on and nothing more.

Not so many years ago, before I had a digital camera, I would only think of taking photographs for a purpose, such as when attending an event or going on holiday. For holidays I would pack two or three rolls of 24 or 36 exposure film and then be selective with the photos I took.  Not being able to see immediate results sometimes meant that I would have a few disasters, but the benefit was the excitement I felt when, a week or more after returning from the holiday, my photos would be ready for collection.  It was always a real treat looking through the prints and remembering the highlights of the holiday.  These prints were then picked over and the best were put in an album.  I have albums going back to my school days.

Framed photograph of Buttermere

Where once I would take a film of 24 photos I’m now taking easily 200+.  For example, yesterday evening I spotted something interesting in the garden and ended up taking over 20 shots.  My iPhone currently has over 1600 photos saved and that is only since June last year.  I take more photos on my cameras than I do on my phone too! It takes a lot longer to sort through so many images to pick out the best ones.  

Photos on an iPhone6

I now have a gap in my photo albums, I no longer get prints made automatically so there are periods where the only photos I have are sitting in files on my computer.  I have made a few photo books, especially of major events like my son’s graduation, but a lot of the past is not so readily available for a quick browse.  The odd photographs that I really love have been printed in a larger format and are displayed on the walls but we don't have enough wall space for too many of these.

Framed photograph of Thirlmere

Our holiday in May, sailing along the Norwegian coastline, has finally made it into a photo booklet which I received at the weekend.  I used Saal Digital to create this (they offer a £15 welcome voucher for your first photobook – just follow the link if you'd like this  http://www.saal-digital.co.uk/photobook/photobook-welcome-voucher/)  and I downloaded their Saal Design Software to create the booklet.  It was quite simple to put the photos into the layout, especially if using the default layouts they suggest.  I did find it a bit tricky when I wanted to override the defaults, but I managed it in the end.  

I put the finishing touches to the booklet and uploaded it to the Saal Digital site late on Wednesday evening and the booklet arrived on Saturday morning.  Impressive.  The quality is very good, with a decent weight to the paper and clear, crisp images. 

Photo booklet from Saal Digital

When I have wanted to print larger images I have used Lumejet prints created through their partner Photocrowd, which is a site that runs photographic contests. These prints are excellent quality and you can get a simple print on its own or framed.

Having just edited the Norway photos from May my next task will be the early summer ones, it will probably take me until late autumn to get these organised!

It would be interesting to know what you do with your photos, do you always get some printed or are they all still languishing on your memory card? Let me know in the comments below.

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