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A New Year’s Resolution: Take Your Family Time Travelling!

Posted on 7 Jan, 2019 by Sarah Hart

Make this the year you print your photos

When did you last print your photos?! How many of you have used your phone this week over the holiday period to take a picture of the moment your kids saw their presents under the tree? Or that lovely feast you produced on Christmas day? How about the ice-skating trip? I’ve seen them….all over Facebook and Instagram, because that’s what we do with our photos now….we share our lives on social media (and that is of course what it is intended for).

This Christmas holiday, I’ve been bursting with pride at watching my son perform in The Birmingham Royal ballet’s Nutcracker at the Royal Albert Hall. I’ve taken so many photos (mainly just on my phone rather than my DSLR) of his little adventure. From the weekly trips to Birmingham to rehearse, to whatever I could capture at the theatre. Plus, I lent him my phone to take in to the dressing room to capture moments backstage. Why? So that we can relive the moment whenever we look back at the photos. Because as the years go by, the memories become more fuzzy and you forget the little details. The photos can’t record every moment but they help keep the memory alive and bring back all the feelings from that time too.

Why Print Your Photos?

It has never been easier to take photographs – we all carry a camera in our mobile phone. And yet our children have fewer and fewer physical prints to hold and look at. When I was younger, my mum printed all her photos (she still does!) and I used to love looking through holiday albums and albums of when she was a child. I loved looking at the clothing, the old cars in the pictures and seeing my grandparents as younger versions. It was like I was time travelling. I could spend hours flicking through my mum’s albums and asking her about the people, places and times she had pictured.

Now imagine if those precious memories were instead sitting on something that needed a machine to let me see them. A machine that was around in the 50’s or even the 80’s. Even if my mum had kept the machines I’d needed, would just seeing them hold the same magic for me. No, I very much doubt they would.

Have a think about where you store your own family photographs. Are they on your mobile phone? A hard drive? CD’s? Mini discs? (remember those!?) Floppy discs? You get my point – technology is changing so rapidly that it can be difficult to keep up. The must-have storage of today is archived in favour of something new every few years. 

The only way you can be sure to preserve your picture memories for your children and grandchildren is to print them.

Your Mobile Phone Pictures

For most of us, our mobile phones are where the majority of our ‘snaps’ are kept. The everyday images of holidays, days out, toothy grins, first foods, and silly selfies. These are the images your children will cherish when they grow up – you must print them! And you have loads of options for printing from your mobile phone – here are some of my favourites:

• You can get up to 500  6×4″ prints from the using the following app on your phone – FREEPRINTSAPP  
• Produce a wall display of small photo tiles that stick to the wall using either PICTILES  or MIXTILES – they’re lightweight, restickable and replaceable when you want to change the display.
• Create photo albums (the old traditional way of printing and popping them in a family album)  or create a photobook – I use BONUSPRINT for good quality printing and create both of my children a yearbook every Christmas – they LOVE looking back at what they’ve done and they can take these books with them when they’re grown-up and leave home to have a lovely collection of their childhoods.  Tip – if you sign up to Bonusprint, at various points in the year, you’ll receive a 60%/65% off voucher  – I often manage to get their 80 page yearbooks for £25 including postage.  I have the images uploaded on to the Bonusprint system and create a bit more of the books each month as it does take quite a lot of time! And then I wait for a voucher to come through before I order. PLUS the added bonus is that my personal images are therefore backup to their cloud storage!

I have a dear friend who, just a few days ago, posted on Facebook that her computer had died. She felt so scared that she had lost all her photos and I really felt for her. It’s a horrible feeling. So, I can’t stress enough how important it is to not only back-up your photos to other external hard-drives, but also go and preserve your images in print!  Make it your resolution for the year 🙂  And I’d love to hear from those of you who do print your images and what you do with them!

And I do practise what I preach. Every year I make a yearbook for each of my children. It captures lots of their memories from that year and they LOVE looking back at them.  You can read more about why I started making these books for them HERE.

Your Professional Pictures

As well as the everyday snaps, most families choose a professional photographer like me to capture more important milestones. New additions to your family, birthdays, a new pet, or the annual family portrait all involve a professional portrait photographer who can capture you all in a perfect setting, looking your best. The portraits I produce at my photography studio in Tonbridge, Kent are your own personal works of art and are designed to be displayed. There is a lot of evidence to show that having photos of you and your family on the wall and displayed around your home, boosts self-esteem and confidence.

I offer clients prints as well as wall art, and although I do sell USB’s which hold the digital copies of your images, I would always recommend purchasing prints and wall art products from me as I use a professional lab so I can guarantee the quality. You don’t want to invest in beautiful portraits only to have poorly printed versions in your home.

Time for new family portraits? Click here to browse my portrait photography services