Why Print? | 100 Days of Personal PhotographsCopyright Kimberly Tank Art & Photography

For my second 100 Days of Ten Project, I choose to do something that didn't involve taking pictures every day but that still dealt with photos. Another photographer in our Facebook group had chosen to organize and finish editing old personal files over the last decade or so, for her 100 Days of Ten Project. This inspired me to want to do something with my personal photos as well. While I did have some unedited personal photos that needed to be edited, what I wanted most was to get ALL of my digital images off my computer and into print. So my project became, 100 Days of Personal Photographs.

Print Your PhotosCopyright Kimberly Tank Art & Photography

I am a big believer in printing your images. Enjoying your favorites on your walls and keeping albums on a shelf to look through when you want to take a walk down memory lane or show your children/grandchildren what life was like before they came around. It is an important part of my business and my walls are filled with photographs. I have always printed my favorites for display on the walls but I haven't made the time to create albums of all the snapshots taken over the years that help me remember those moments that were captured. It's so easy to let it slide. We post the pictures we take on social media or maybe even a family share site, and then it's forgotten. How often do you sit down at your computer and peruse all those old photos filling up your hard drive? I know I don't. 

Photo Album Shelf - BeforeCopyright Kimberly Tank Art & Photography

When I started this project, I had some albums with 4x6 prints from before I owned a digital camera, and some that weren't complete (like my secondary wedding album). I had done a belly book and baby book for my son but the printer I was using to print the pictures for those had died before I finished them so the baby book still needed a few photos. I started by finishing what I already had, filling my wedding album with the 4x6s we already had printed, and completing the baby book and a birthday book for my son that I hadn't put any photos in yet. Once those were complete, I moved on to filling the empty photo albums I already had with 4x6 prints of the digital photos from the early years of my marriage. 

Photo Album Shelf - AfterCopyright Kimberly Tank Art & Photography

Once the albums for 4x6 prints were full, I started working on designing and ordering albums for the more recent years. I had done a couple for my son's first year but never finished. I tried several consumer labs for this part of the project and I'll be writing a blog post comparing the labs I used. As I write this, I still have two more years to do an annual album for, though I do have a couple albums already for last year from my Project 52 and our summer family session with a fellow NAPCP photographer. 

Looking Through an AlbumCopyright Kimberly Tank Art & Photography

Now that I've told you about my project, here are some reasons why you should print your photos...

It has been said multiple times that this generation we're raising is the most photographed generation, but with the fewest photographs. In the digital age, pictures get shared on social media and that's it. If our parents and grandparents hadn't printed photos, what would we have left? Not much. When you want to go back to a memory, or jog your memory of something forgotten, there's nothing better to preserve those memories and take up back to that moment than a photograph.

Looking through his baby bookCopyright Kimberly Tank Art & Photography

I can remember as a kid pulling out albums and boxes of old pictures and looking through them. Seeing myself as a baby or asking about the people in the photographs that I didn't know. My grandmother died before I turned two and the few memories I have of her are vague and it's those old photographs that help me remember her. My son loves to pull out albums and look through them, especially the ones of him as a baby and the belly book where he can see the progression of my growing belly as he grew inside of it. 

There are studies now that show how having family portraits on your walls can boost your child's self-esteem. They see those photographs every day and see their importance in the family unit. 

Digital is NOT archival. Technology is ever changing (anyone have a floppy disc hanging around?) and you are more likely to experience a hard drive crash (12%) than you are a house fire (<1%). 

In 100 days, spending about ten minutes a day, I was able to complete albums from 2004-2013. That's a decade worth of images and memories that are now preserved in print. I'm so glad I did this now before I became any further behind. Once I finish the last two, all I'll need to do is print my favorites as I go (which is what I've always done) and then create and order an annual album in January each year. If money is tight, there are always companies offering coupons and discounts on photo books. I could have it designed and ready to order and just wait for the next sale or coupon. My family's memories are too important to let them die on a hard drive. 

<3

Kim

Owner/Photographer-Artist

Kimberly Tank Art & Photography