This morning I noticed an apartment makeover in my Facbook feed. I shot Therese and Oskar-Ture’s wedding outside Stockholm a few years ago. As I scrolled through the images of their amazing apartment, I noticed the prints on their living room wall and my heart skipped a beat. In their perfect home, on their perfect wall, I saw first one, then two of my photos. Images we created together last summer in Stockholm. And you know what? It made me proud and very happy. It’s not very often as a photographer I get to see my images “after they grow up”. They leave my computer on a DVD or USB drive, but after that they’re gone. Many of my couples order one of my books too, so sometimes I get to see my images printed which is the way i love seeing them.
There’s something magical about a printed image. When I grew up my mother made albums from our holiday snaps and sometimes when I’m home, I go through them. Those images from my childhood are worth more to me than any jpeg on my many hard drives. Crappy snaps with date stamps of me and my cousins playing dress up in our summer house on Gotland bring me right back there and I cherish those photos immensely.
If you leave your photos on a disk or your hard drive, your images will gradually fade into oblivion. The images are still there in that folder, but you never look at them and the photographer in me quietly questions why you paid to have me there on your day if you didn’t intend to do something with your photos.
Print your photos, my friends. Put them on walls, on fridges or in books, but just print them, ok? Every time you walk past that wall, you will remember that day and smile.
And one day your kids will thank you too.
photo: Therese Winberg
Thank you for these simple yet amazing post….