Recently, I asked Nicole Weeks to contribute to our blog. Something that we could not agree more on is printing your photographs is important.

from: Nicole Weeks Photography

We sat around the table surrounded by shoeboxes overflowing with pictures. My grandma, with her wrinkly fingers gently passed each photo to me as she told stories about each image she placed into my tiny hands. We laughed at the haircuts my dad had as a child, I asked questions about the people standing in a group photo, I gasped in excitement as I began to remember my earlier days as a child that were displayed in vivid color before my eyes.

While running around the fireplace at my other grandma’s house I would often need to rest for a quick break. This meant hopping up on her green couch, leaning over the arm and picking up each photograph she displayed on the dark wood coffee table that inhabited her living room. Some were big, some were small. Some dwelled in elaborate frames while others were a mini album you could flip through. It was always exciting to see what new photos she added to the table of our family.

As I grew older, these memories of always looking at pictures with my two grandmother’s remain so lively in my mind. I couldn’t imagine walking into their homes and not seeing any pictures on their walls because they were stored on their computers and phones. There is something so unique about holding a picture or album in your hands and getting to flip through each one. It is sacred and sadly so rare nowadays because technology has taken over.  It’s hard to preserve your family’s legacy through ever-changing technology. You never know when your computer may crash or your cloud storage becomes too full. There are so many things that can go wrong and with a million and a half folders living on your desktop how can you keep all your picture files organized? This is where printing your photos is essential!

Sure, it may cost you a little more but to me, the cost of printing my pictures compared to losing my digital files or missing out on preserving my family’s legacy is priceless. I print my pictures all the time! I take photographs daily and throughout the year I go back, print them out, write the date on the back and a little description, and add them to my photo albums that reside in my living room for easy access! 

I look forward to the days where my family will sit down together after a day of adventure and I will be the one passing photo after photo to my grandchildren, sharing each story of how each picture came to be. Something as simple as printing your photos so you can cherish memories for eternity, and will be something that I will continue to do so the stories of my time will be preserved, and shared as my legacy.

Photographs provided by Nicole Weeks Photography