Print Photographer, North Yorkshire
You will hear me harp on about this all the time, and whilst people may think that it’s a ploy to get you to spend money, it’s really not about my back pocket, I can’t say it enough…GET YOUR IMAGES PRINTED!
In this day and age everything is digital. And whilst that’s not necessarily a bad thing, what happens when Facebook isn’t around anymore, what happens when your USB or hard drive corrupts? PUFF, gone! Digital images are so easily lost, never to be recovered. Think of our histories, if we didn’t have pictures, paintings, sculptures, books and texts ect, how would we view our history? What would we know about it? Why do we not want to show our own individual history? There are pictures and paintings from soooo many years ago still available to view today but can I tell you where the disc of images I had taken of my children 5 years ago is? Can I heckers. But, the canvas I had made up shortly after my daughter was born is still hanging pride of place on my living room wall.
As a little bit of a back story about why I am so passionate about this.
Back in 2012 I lost my beautiful mum to the devastating disease that is Cancer. I now have a cupboard full of her photos and albums. Those are her memories, and mine to some extent. If she haven’t of had those photos, where would those memories be now? I can look back on those photos at any time. They make me smile and they help me remember… who she was, the memories we made. I feel bad that the children of today’s generation won’t have that with so many of us not having our images printed. And this is why I consider myself to be a Print Photographer.
This is exactly why I made the decision, (with the exception of weddings) to only sell printed products. I know everyone wants to share their memories with the digital world so I do include Social Media images, but my passion is images in a physical form. Not everyone likes that and that’s fine. There are many photographers out there who can offer digital only. But i’ll tell you now, there’s no finer feeling than seeing your images in print.
Digitals are just pictures, but the physical products are art.
It is my art and I take pride in creating it.
As a print photographer, I want people to walk past my imagery everyday and smile, I want them to see it.
I spent a long time choosing the products I wanted to offer my clients. I wanted them to be hard wearing, I wanted them to last, I wanted them to look exactly the same 20 years down the line as what they did when I first handed them over to the client. That canvas that I mentioned earlier? It’s still on my wall yes and will remain there as it’s sentimental value and it has meaning to me…it’s from a time that i’ll never see again and is now only a memory. But it now looks awful. It’s faded, it’s patchy, it’s now got an orange, yellow tinge and looks like it has lived in the home of a 40-a-day-smoker. It’s 4 years old. It was a cheap coupon deal that I found on Facebook. A classic case of that old saying, you get what you pay for.
For this reason, I chose high quality products of an archival nature.
To stand the test of time that could be intended as family heirlooms. The samples I keep to show customers still look amazing, despite having been touched by many hands. If I knew where that digital version of the canvas I have on my wall was now, I’d replace that canvas now that I know better. Another example of printed products out-living digital ones. I sought to not only provide outstanding products but also ones of a more budget friendly nature, so that everyone who had a shoot with me could consider printed products. A chance for everyone to start writing their histories!
Oh, and whilst I was photographing my pieces, I had this thing muzzle her way in for some attention. What a pretty girl with her little ginger patches. She fits in well, we all have some ginger in us in this house, even the husband has ginger patches in his beard…don’t tell him I told you so!
