Are You An Image Hoarder?

…If so it might be having an impact on your family’s life story and legacy.

What good is having thousands of photographs of your children if you can’t spend time appreciating them?

Digital photography is fantastic. It is accessible to everyone. It is immediate. It is fast. It is fun. Plus we can record aspects of our family life that otherwise would be lost.

However I do believe that these very things that make digital photography so amazing, also have had a detrimental impact

Unlike a print, its hard to hold an iphone photo with any real intimacy. We take so many digital photos that we never go back and truly look at and appreciate what made us take the photo in the first place…we just move on to the next photo opportunity. With thousands upon thousands of family photos on our phone, tablets, camera cards and computers we are photo hoarders. Just like people who store junk in their garage because one day it may come in handy, we take photos willy-nilly telling ourselves that one day we will sort them out. Really? The truth is there are likely to be so many life memories on your computer that they may never resurface to see the light of day.

This has been a disturbing trend for some time now and I thought I should highlight a situation I encountered where this was the case.

Are you missing time spans in your children’s lives?

Recently I was at an 18th birthday party feeling rather old amongst all the young adults there. It reminded me of the times when in my 30’s. I somehow ended up at a nightclub. You know the ones..where the bouncer doesn’t ask to see your driver’s license but rather your senior citizens card.

Anyway I digress. The parents of the birthday girl had decided to create a photo wall for her. On the wall they had printed photographs showing her life story. It was a huge hit amongst guests but to me there was something wrong.

There were a lot of photos of her as a baby, a toddler and as a small child but at the time when she would’ve been around 6 or 7 years old the number of photos started to diminish. Then there was this huge gap of no photos of her between the age of 7 and when she was a teenager.

I thought to myself what had happened during those year? It then dawned on me that at some point her parents must have bought a digital camera and since that time all the photos of her were now on a computer somewhere.

Watching everyone smiling and pointing at this photo wall and listening to some of their stories, I thought to myself what a shame it was that they couldn’t see the rest of her life story.

[tongue firmly in cheek] I guess it would’ve been too hard to pull out the laptop, find the correct hard drive the images were stored on and have each guest look at those photos one at a time.

It would have also been extremely inconvenient to pull out their smart phone and pass it around to each guest!

Yes, I am being a little cheeky here. But the point I’m trying to make is that even though we take many photos of our families each day we never get a chance to fully appreciate them afterwards. It’s almost like they never existed. Then heaven forbid if something happened to your phone and all your images are gone forever!! Read this article to safeguard this from happening to you, Keeping Your Family Photos Safe Through Photo Backups.

Now compare that to having prints to touch and hold and connect emotionally with. I know it’s impractical to print every photo you take but make it a goal to print some of the better ones or the ones that give you a lot of satisfaction.

Benefits of Printing Photos

This is exactly what a professional photography session is all about. To create beautiful family portraits that will one day become priceless pieces of art that can be passed down from one generation to the next. Until that time comes, they can be hung on the walls of your home where they can be looked at and never forgotten, becoming discussion pieces for friends and relatives when they come over.

If you are in a similar situation where all the photos you have of your family are not of great quality and forgotten on a computer somewhere then now is a great time to start thinking about scheduling a family portrait session.

I encourage you to call me at the studio on 9570 6191 for an informal chat or send me an email here and I’ll follow up with a phone call.

Until next time. Take care.

Warren