Paved With Prints!

And canvases, or acrylic prints and collages and more! Why else do we have bare walls in our homes? To fill them with love, laughter and the memories of the past soon to be long gone.

Thanks to the innovative technology available to us today, smart phone cameras are expertly capable of taking some fantastic photographs. The memory on them is huge. So each day you can snap away and you’d not even think about it twice. But, what next? Photos on phones, USBs, Hard drives get forgotten, left in a draw or worse… corrupted. I lost a large chunk of some holiday snaps in 2015 because of water damage to a ‘waterproof’ phone! I have known of people storing their images on social media in private albums! Crazy! It could be possible to lose access and then those photos are gone forever. Why risk it? Those are your memories and should be treated as such.

Photo Albums..

Do you ever spend time going through photo albums? I love doing it. I get to look back on things I have long forgotten in my childhood. Looking over photographs of my parents, grandparents and even great grandparents who are no longer with us. How special is that? Just to touch that photo brings back so many memories, takes me right back to that time and I remember the feelings, the smells, the touch and conversations stored deep in my mind. Sometimes as a family (myself, brothers, parents) sit together on the rare occasion and just remenisce on years gone and share the same laughter, love and togetherness captured in that photo. Reminding each other of the funny times, the sad, the good and bad.

Never Forgotten…

My grandad passed away unexpectedly in 2007, when I was 16 years old and it was the very worst time in my life. I spoke to him just two days prior and although I didn’t have a DSLR camera then, I had my smart phone. I took a photo of him, just of him, in a moment where he was looking at something – I cannot remember what. I promise you, it is the MOST cherished and loved photograph of him that I own. Now, there are plenty of photos of him, from his wedding to various moments throughout his life but none mean more to me than that photo. The last one of him I took. Everybody has a copy of it. For years I couldn’t bear to look at the photograph without getting profoundly upset. The sadness I would experience over lost opportunities. My only comfort being that I took a photograph of him that I was able to have printed. I can show that photograph to my own children to tell them stories about my child with him – their great grandad and show them all the photographs we have. Powerful. Images hold so much more than just a picture though, it is like he is still there, part of the family forever. My only regret is that we never invested in a family photographer.

Value of Photography…

It is an expensive luxury, though one may say I am biased; one I believe everyone should invest in. It is less about the money and more about what having your photographs taken does for you. The feelings and moments you share together during family portraits, the love and pride you have when seeing your newborn baby sleeping so sweetly during their newborn baby portrait session. The happiness and joy of your baby’s 12 month milestone cake smash photography session. Moments that cannot be recreated at that same point in time again. That is the magic of having a photographer capture these for you. Prints are guaranteed through your photographer and you can be assured of the quality and longevity of them. That they will look just as I would want them to be when you receive them.

They become family heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation. Your past can then be a part of their future, they will know you, see you and remember you through the photographs you have. Your children will be able to look at photographs of you during your pregnancy, seeing how you gently caressed your growing bump so lovingly. How you cradled them so close as a newborn baby and of course, you can stick a photograph or two on a slide show at their 18th birthday from their very first birthday from their cake smash. With that, they too will see the value in printing their photographs.

Memories live on in your photos – and that is why you should print them. But if you do, put them in an album, choose canvases, giant acrylic montages, framed products. So everyone can see your memories, touch and feel them and experience only a percentage of what you know of from being there.

Clifford George Miller 14th July 1948 – 15th March 2007