Print your Pictures!- Heather Palmer Photography
The other day, I found my 11 year old on the floor with his scrapbooks all around him. He was having so much fun looking at the photos and telling me what he remembers about each one. It made all of the hours which I spent, hand gluing each of the photos to the page worth it! Contrast this experience to the photos which were still on my phone and computer. My children never really gets the opportunity to view those! These photos seem to be lost in cyberspace and are mainly hidden from our children’s lives.
There is something special about holding a photo, especially for kids! Face it, this is the most photographed generation in history of the world, with very little physical proof or prints of it. Everything is on our hard drive, tablets or cell phone. Children need to see their faces around your home, on physical photograph prints.
Nothing upsets me more than to hear someone tell me that they had their hard drive fail and sadly, lost all of their families photos in the process. This happens more than we expect, photos are lost due to improper maintenance and failed backups. It makes me ill just thinking about potentially losing these memories or pictures of my family. This is why I make it a habit to print all of my photos, along with having them saved on my computer and external hard drives.
So here is the big question: Where & how do you print them? There are so many ways you can print your pictures! I’m going to talk about the most popular methods for printing our photos- photo albums and photo prints.
Albums: The easiest way to scrapbook, for me, is chatbooks.(https://chatbooks.com) If you are already posting photos to instagram, chatbooks will connect to your account and automatically make your books for you. Here is the best part- you don’t have to have instagram to use them! You can make your books on your own as well. You can find out more about this process at chatbooks.com.
I also use Shutterfly (https://www.shutterfly.com/) for photo books. They have deals all the time that make their books very inexpensive. The thing I love the most about making my scrapbooks online, is if they ever get damaged or lost, I can replace them with a click of a button because they are automatically archived on the websites database.
Prints: Personally I don’t recommend going to a box store for large prints. If the photo is going to be displayed on my wall, I want the colors to look right and box stores are very hit and miss with their colors and printing quality. Locally we have a few places that do beautiful prints (especially if you are getting a larger print). Square One Printing: (http://www.sq1.biz), Watkins Printing: (https://www.printwatkins.com) and The Print Factory: (https://yourprintfactory.com) All of these companies do an amazing job at fair prices. I always recommend my photo clients, to use these stores if they need a photo printed quickly!
If you would like to order online, Pro Digital Photos (https://www.prodigitalphotos.com/home) and Persnickety Prints (https://www.persnicketyprints.com) are great companies. Both of these companies make beautiful photo cards and announcements as well and are located in Utah. Nationally MPIX is another company which does higher end printing and many of my clients use and love their products. Also, I use Shutterfly for my 4×6″ prints because they periodically have amazing sales or the bargain shopper.
Photos make it so easy to relive our memories. Holding those memories in your own hands is priceless! Technology and improperly backed up electronics can lose these priceless memories of our families. Having physical copies means that your images can last for years and generations and leave lasting impressions upon your children.
Print your Pictures!- Heather Palmer Photography