For the last three weeks we have been covering what we feel are some important topics related to your wedding photography. We started by going over some questions you should ask your photographer, things to keep in mind when preparing for your wedding day images and last week we covered how creating a timeline will help ensure the best possible wedding images for you and your partner.
In this fourth and final week we want to cover a topic that sometimes can get overlooked in the fast-paced digital world we live in - printing your images.
Printing your images is important because technology changes fast, hard drives fails and printed images are easier to enjoy regularly.
#3 Technology Changes Fast
10x10 Leather album with crystal cover in a velvet lined presentation box. Learn More
Remember floppies? Maybe you’re not old enough, but there once were these little square disks called floppies that held no more than 1mb of data and were so ubiquitous that software manufacturers would sell their applications on them. I still remember installing my first version of Windows using a few floppy disks. That was ages ago and today you would be hard-pressed to find a modern computer with anything resembling a floppy disk. Why? Because technology changes and the old gets phased out. Today we have a new kind of floppy it’s called the cd or dvd. And guess what, it’s being phased out too. Did you know that Apple no longer includes dvd drives in in their desktop models and some of the laptops. They are slowly being phased out due to the ease of downloading content from the internet. So think about this scenario. You’ve been married for 10 to 15 years when you are sitting around your fireplace and your kids want to see your wedding photos? You think to yourself, “hmm now where is that dvd the photographer gave me..?” I know what you’re thinking, that dvd is long gone and even if you were to find it how in the world are you going to open it. Imagine all the photographers that gave their couples their images on a floppy disk, how in the world are they going to open them today? Hopefully you see the point I am trying to make, technology changes and there is no guarantee that a dvd or cd you get today will actually be viewable in the future. Printing your images is the only guarantee that you have (as long as you take care of them) that you will be able to show your kids the funny hairdo and clothes you wore back then when you got married. We believe so strongly in printing images that in almost all of our curated wedding collections we include a wedding album with a presentation box.We feel it is our responsibility to provide that for you and your family to cherish now and into the future.
Heirloom wooden photo box with 100 4x6 prints and a usb drive. Learn More
#2 Hard Drives Fail
Back in 2005 we moved to Texas and lived in El Paso for a year and half. My oldest boy was only three years old and our baby girl was just born.. My wife and I loved taking many pictures and saving them to our computer and our external hard drive so we could carry the images with us anywhere we went. Like all young couples living in the new digital era we did not feel the need to print the images since they were safely stored on our expensive external hard drive. One day as we we plugged the hard drive into our computer nothing happened. We waited for the drive to appear on the desktop but nothing. We unplugged it, plugged it back in and still nothing. We moved it to another computer and still nothing. At that point our hearts sank at the thought that we had lost all of those images. After an agonizing few hours of research we discovered that the hard drive had indeed failed and that we could not recover those images. Had we printed those images at least we would have them to enjoy today but we didn’t so we don’t. This is another reason why printing your images is important, hard drives fail and unless you have lots of disposable income and can send them away to attempt recovery you will have lost those images forever. While we still use hard drives to store our images we store them in multiple locations and online to make sure this never happens again - but more importantly we now also print our images just to be sure.
#1 They are Easier to Enjoy
Imagine you are walking downstairs on a Saturday morning to grab your coffee and you notice the early morning sun filtering through your living room window and onto your wall. That early morning sun just happens to hit your wall right where that large wall portrait of your engagement day is hanging above your loveseat. You stop and look at how the light is softly caressing the frame and over into the image and you start to reminisce about that day and how much you loved every moment. You sit down and to have your coffee and then, prompted by those memories, you take out your wedding day album and start flipping through it to see how amazing your day was. Tears begin to fill your eyes at the sight of an old friend you haven’t seen in years and then you smile as you see a photo of your husband with that big smile and think to yourself - such an amazing day and such an amazing memory. Now think about this - what if you didn’t have the wall art and what if all you had was an aging dvd sitting on your shelf collecting dust? A dvd that as the years pass by provided no enjoyment and no guarantee that you would be able to open it and view it’s contents. Which of those two experiences would you prefer? I think we can both agree the first one is more desireable. Printing your images is important because images are meant to be enjoyed, looked at and pored over - not once but over a lifetime. When you visit our design studio you will notice something different. It is not set up as a studio or as an office - rather it is setup as a living room. We have a loveseat, coffee table with some leather bound albums on it, some table lamps and some beautiful framed wall art. We want you to see how it feels to be surrounded with works of art that feature beautiful couples like you and your future spouse. We want you to enjoy your own works of art now and for a lifetime that’s why we encourage printing your images.
Over the last four weeks we have covered a number of topics which we hope have been helpful to you in preparing for your wedding day. Whether it’s questions for your photographer, preparing for your images, creating a timeline or printing your images we hope that you are better prepared as you go on to your wedding planning. If you need any advice or direction feel free to reach out to us for a consultation at no cost to you - we enjoy helping couples whether we are there photographer or not.