I am guilty. Guilty of not printing our photos out like I would hope to. When my husband and I bought our house, we said we did not want to have tons of frames all over the place, maybe just 1 or 2 photos would be nice but we wanted to keep it minimal. Well, we really only had 1 canvas print of a family photo that was taken at Thanksgiving in 2017. It is not my favorite photo I have ever taken, but it is the first full family photo we have had where we are all dressed nicely for the holiday.
When was the last time you printed your photos? Has it been way too long and you just realized you should probably back up your cell phone photos to your computer while we are thinking about this subject? You my friend, are not alone! Smart phone photos are so great that you can literally snap the photo, and share it with others on social media in seconds! I love taking photos on my phone… in fact…. my storage is almost full! See… you’re not alone!
SMART PHONE PRINTING-
Something I do is share my family photos on my PERSONAL instagram account. This account gets updated once a week usually ( or when I remember) and I upload many images at once. This is mainly for the purpose of printing through CHATBOOKS.
Chatbooks is a great way to have your cell phone photos printed. The books begin at $10 and once your instagram hits 60 photos, they create a book for you. You can use a consistent hashtag to keep the images you want printed all together and then the book is designed with that. These are a great way to never lose those precious moments you captured with your phone and a great way to have your photos displayed at home in a decor basket under or on a coffee table for guests to see!
To keep the budget on a lower side, I use the standard chatbook with a soft back and instagram photos.
GALLERY WALL-
I have seen so many blogs and pinterest photos of these GORGEOUS gallery photo walls! I am telling you, I am obsessed with how these look! You can use photos from your phone, and edit them to make them all consist in color, you can use professional photos as well knowing that when these are edited, the color will be consistent and all you have to do is select the frames!
Since we moved we now have beautiful wall space that having a gallery wall will look so nice! We just need to decide where we want to display it. I printed out 9 photos that I made all black and white since the photos were not from one session rather than from over the past few years so I knew the colors wouldn’t be consistent. I got 9 gold frames from Walmart- Better Homes and Garden 11×14 matted for 8×10 photos. I love how this looks and I can not wait to see it hanging on the wall all together.
The best thing about a gallery wall?? You can easily take the frames down and change out the photos when you want to!
Here are a few gallery wall inspirations I found online. **Note these are not my images but just images to give you an example of a gallery wall.
Once our gallery is hanging up, I will be sure to share how it came out! 🙂
FAMILY YEAR BOOK-
This is the same thing as a photo book only for me, I am creating this to be a yearly book where I have all our adventures captured and organized and at the end of each year I will place them into a book. My cousin, Jordan Brian Photography does something similar to this but instead of a printed book, he creates a slideshow with music and video. That is a wonderful Idea, however I am sticking to the hard back, paper pages and these books will be out all the time for us and guests to see!
Each year I take thousands and thousands of photos! I have been wanting to create these books since Ethan entered the world and I just kept putting it off. I never wanted to carry by “big” camera around because watching that and watching my live children run around in crowded places, I did not want to worry about my camera! So, here is something I realized I can do!
- Use my cell phone. Edit the cell phone photos with my Ali B Preset that I use on all my photos in Lightroom Mobil. This will help them to look professional even when they are not. If you do not have Lightroom- I recommend the app PIC- TAP- GO. This app is $1.99 and has nice filters to help make your photos professional. ( My favorite filters are: Bright side and air)
- Keep my FIRST “big” camera downstairs on a console table so that I can access it quickly while at home. Since I started doing this, I have taken more photos with a real camera than I usually do of my own kids and family! ( you have no idea how happy that makes me!)
- I am using my FIRST big camera because then I am not stressed out and worried that something will happen to my work camera I use for clients. This takes a huge weight off my shoulders- I still am careful but knowing I do not need that one for work is kinda a big deal!
So, I finally made the time to go through folders and folders of images from 2014-2018 and I am starting to create the books! I edited the images pretty quickly since some were already edited from that time, and I am creating the year books through BLURB. These books will be HUGE. There are so many photos from the years and because they will be huge, I am using a hard cover with floppy pages like an actual year book so that I can fit as many photos and pages as I can inside.
Once these are printed and I get them in my hands, I can not wait so share them along with you on social media and this blog!
WEDDING GUEST BOOK-
I have had several brides print their own album from their engagement session which will be used as their wedding guest book! I love this idea…. now I may be biased because this is what my husband and I used for our wedding guestbook, but really its so fun getting to look back on your engagement sessions together and then reading all these nice things your guests have said to you on your wedding day! All of my wedding packages come with the rights to your photos which means you can print from anywhere you’d like! I have sugestions on where to print for the optimal quality photos but its totally up to you and your budget how much you want to spend. This year I am also offering album options printed from a professional printing lab. They are absolutely Ahhhhhmazing!
Photobook Printing suggestions:
Canvas Printing Suggestions:
If you are a client and looking to print your photos, you can do this right off of your digital gallery website!!! Email me for more details!
xoxo,
Alex
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