Print vs. Digital - 26/02/2016

 

I've been thinking lately about the purpose of photographs, about what they mean to us and why we take them. Before digital cameras, photographs were more precious, I think. They took time and money to create, took up physical space to store, always reminding us of their presence, encouraging us to look, and to re-live.

I love the fact that having a reasonably good camera on my phone means I not only have the ability to photograph the mundane as often as the fabulous, and can push the boundaries of my photography skill without the restrictions of developing negatives first, I also think this photographic freedom comes at a cost. Since I went digital I have taken and stored hundreds of thousands of photographs and all of the ones I have chosen to save have a meaning, or a purpose or a beauty that make me want to keep them, but really what use is a photograph if nobody can see it? What use are they trapped forever inside a hard-drive in a drawer? Or sandwiched between snapshots of irrelevant other things on your phone?

So I've started make an effort to print my pictures, to keep a physical set of all of the most precious images of my daughter and our family give them a purpose again. I keep a little gallery of prints around my house and I've started creating photo books for people I shoot weddings for in the hope that one day there will be a little kid as taken with those memories of the people who came before them, as I had once been.