NH Wedding Photographer | Light and Airy NH Wedding Photographer
Digital Files, Prints, and Albums...OH MY!
Nothing beats seeing your images for the first time! You will beam with joy thinking of all of the amazing memories that you remember, and seeing some moments that you might have missed! I’m sure you absolutely want to share them on social media ASAP, and maybe you have considered hanging a few on your wall...but what other options are there?
Digital Files
One of my favorite things to do when I was a child was to flip through old photo albums with my family. I loved seeing how we all used to look, what styles were popular (hello huge 80’s glasses), and all of the places that we used to live. I still love flipping through all of the photo albums that my parents have (which is quite a lot) but the problem is...they live 1,500 miles away.
You can see why I believe digital files are SO important. I want you to be able to share your photos with everyone, far and wide! Thank goodness for old school scanners so I can ask my dad to scan photos so that I can share them with my friends on social media. Also, so long are the days of wallet photos, these days grandparents are sharing their grandkid’s photos with strangers on the street by whipping out their phone and scrolling through their photos! Digital files are also so important down the road if you ever need to print more photos for any occasion. This is why I include digital files to ALL of my clients. But having only digital files isn’t the end all be all.
Prints
Your images deserve to live somewhere beyond the cloud.
Like I mentioned above, my family lives pretty far away. As you can imagine, it is difficult to get my family, my parents, and my sisters’ families all together at the same time. It happens maybe once every other year. Even still, my kids know who their family is. They know what their aunts and cousins look like. How? We have framed photos of them all around our house. We have photos of them in our albums. We intentionally talk about who those people are in the photos. That means the world to me. Without prints, my kids wouldn’t remember their family. When we finally do meet up as a big extensive family unit, my kids don’t think that these people are strangers!
Another thought about prints. Why would you want to order prints through your photographer if you can just print the digital files yourself?
The short answer is, they will look better. I have had many clients print through another service and after the prints arrive they email me saying “they don’t look anything like they do on the computer”. The professional printing lab that I use is calibrated to my computer screen. So the prints will look like they are meant to! Plus the quality will be more professional and your prints will last longer over time.
Albums
Let’s go back to my album flipping obsession. This was also something that I would do with my grandmother when she was alive. Every time I would visit her (which was about twice a year) I would find photo albums and I would flip through them. I would learn about who my family was, what my grandmother looked like when she was young, and how my mother grew up. I remember there was an antique album that was stashed separately underneath a china cabinet that I found one day. I pulled it out and asked her what it was. She said that it was a very very old album of some of our ancestors. The album contained photos that were over 100 years old. I learned about some of my distant relatives and she told me some stories about them that had been passed down to her.
Not surprising to find out, I own tons of albums in my own house now. Our kids love flipping through these albums, much as I did when I was a kid. It has also helped our foster daughter get “up to speed” on our family dynamics when she first arrived. She felt like she knew people’s names quickly and felt like a part of the family quickly, even with those relatives that live far away that we Facetime occasionally. She especially felt a belonging when she began to show up in the albums!
For my brides...
Unless you’re like me and you’re obsessed with detail shots, you probably won’t have prints of your shoes and florals hanging on your wall. But these little details are perfect to have in your album! You will always want to remember what your style was like and what details you chose for your wedding day. You probably won't be hanging photos of every wedding guest either but you want to remember who was there. This is what makes a wedding album so important. Your album tells the whole story of the day. A day that is so important that it will impact generations to come. It is the story of how your family got started. The day that changed everything.
One last thing, five years from now, nobody is going to go looking for your “Wedding Day” album on Facebook and scroll through your photos...BUT someone who is invited into your house and sees your wedding album on the coffee table will pick it up and look through it. You get to relive that day over and over again every time someone looks through it!
Think about flipping through the album with your future kids….
your grandkids...
That kind of stuff is priceless to me. Photos displayed in your home mean more than just photos. This is about belonging, memories, and love.
