A Living Photograph | The Value of Print

Despite what you may think by the images below – This is not a post about how much I love canvas prints. And don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adore having images blown up on canvas… but that’s a different post for another day. You see, today’s post is about something a little bit bigger than just a canvas print. It’s about an issue that a few photographers have talked about recently. An issue that I feel like I also need to talk about.

Today’s blog post questions why we, as photographers, are so quick to allow our images to live on the computer. It’s about the importance of bringing our memories to life in a tangible way. I’m one of the guilty ones, who stores all of my personal photographs in a folder on my desktop, who posts them to Facebook, sends them in emails, but never gets around to printing them.

It’s impossible to deny the fact that we live in a digital world. From the moment I wake up until I fall asleep, I’m attached to some sort of visually electronic device – regardless of whether we think about it or not, we are absolutely glued to our smart phones and computers. And between sharing images on social media sites, online viewing galleries, Instagram, you name it – our images spend the majority of their time behind the computer screen.

So we must ask ourselves… Why do we no longer print our cherished photographs?

I’ve always thought of professional photography as a piece of art, not simply a snapshot, not merely an image. A photograph that captures a moment, that preserves a feeling or emotion, should never be diminished to existing solely on a computer screen. A piece of art, as significant as a photograph, deserves to be printed… it deserves to be passed around the coffee-table or hung on a wall for all to see. It deserves to exist in the three dimensional world, separate from virtual reality. Photographs deserve a physical place in our lives.

I remember reading a post by Mary Kate McKenna about how “The Cobblers kids have no shoes” and I’ve always thought it was funny how, “The photographer has no photographs of herself and her family.” – Maybe it’s because we’re often the ones behind the camera, capturing special moments for others… Maybe it’s because even when we do manage to have photographs taken of ourselves and our loved ones we don’t take the time to print them in personal albums or minimally in 4×6’s to frame around the house.

I have to laugh at the fact that I probably have printed more photographs of my clients as gifts, than I have of my own friends and family. And the very few photographs that clutter my desk and walls are from childhood – in the days of film, when an image needed to be printed to be appreciated.

I would like to believe, at least in some fundamental way, that the importance of printing photographs did not die with the emergence of the digital era. That somehow printing a photograph on canvas gives it more significance. That being able to hold an photograph in my hands means more than clicking through an online gallery…

I’m not trying to belittle the incredible gift that technology and computers offer the modern day photographer… I’m not trying to say that sharing images online is bad or that I’m not in love with having my iPhone image gallery with me 24/7. My goal is simply to encourage photographers, both professional and amateur, to remember that images were never meant to live behind a screen. Photographs should be printed. They should be held and shared on a personal level. Talked about between friends. Enjoyed in a family room.

To print a photograph is to give life to a memory.
Just a sentiment from a child of the digital era… from a photographer trying to change her own ways.