7 steps to better photo printing habits

Jan 28, 2021 | Family, Photography Education, Tips for Families

When I was young, my mom had a point and shoot film camera. She’d buy a 24 exposure roll of film and it would last her half a year, sometimes more. She’d pull it out to document small moments in our childhood: a birthday party, a picnic with friends, a trip to the beach. After all 24 photos were taken, she’d roll up the film, put it into its tiny cylindrical container and drop it off at the local photo lab. A week and a few dollars later, she’d get her photos back and we’d eagerly pull the stack of 4×6 prints out of the envelope to look through it all. It was pure joy, and we cherished re-living the last few months through those prints.

My childhood’s story and its moments would be most remembered by the photos my mom took. If something wasn’t documented in a photo, my memories of it are very foggy. 

I’m a very nostalgic person and one of my favourite things to do is to flip through old photo albums. Back in the film days, you didn’t have photos without prints. Inevitably, physical photo albums were always being made.

Enter in the digital age. It’s so easy to take photos. In fact, we are drowning in opportunities for capturing memories. Our phones live in our back pockets and they can take unlimited photos. 

But are we printing them? Are photo albums being made?

For me, I would get so overwhelmed by my iPhone camera roll that I would just ignore the task. Years would go by, and hardly any photos of my kids would get printed.

But that has changed! I finally realized that I needed to develop an easy system so that printing would become second nature. We now have family photos albums on our shelf in the living room, and it’s SO valued to us.

It comes down to basic photo habits. No organizational apps required! It’s easy. Here’s what I do!

STEP 1 – First off, I make sure to bring my iPhone everywhere so that I never miss a moment to take a photo, especially candid moments. Get into the habit of always taking a photo whenever you feel an inkling to capture a moment.

STEP 2 – Every few weeks, I go through my camera roll and I “heart” all my favourite photos, especially the ones that capture the story of our family’s life. As the weeks go by, your “favourites” album on your iPhone will grow with a curated collection of all your important photos.

STEP 3 – Whenever you’re hearting new photos, take the time to edit them right away. (Don’t wait until the end of the year, otherwise you’ll be tempted to skip this step!) You can use any photo editing app, but my favourite is Adobe’s free Lightroom Mobile app. Here are some quick and simple editing tips:

 – import your photos into Lightroom. Edit them with these tools:

 – adjust the exposure slider to get better brightness

 – use the contrast tools to make your photos pop

 – adjust the colour tools to correct for any harsh colour saturation

 – use the texture and clarity tools if your photos need a bit of extra “crunchiness”

 – add a bit of sharpening and noise reduction to finish off the photo

(If you’d like to learn how to use the Lightroom app, check out my Mobile Phone Photography courses here.)

STEP 4 – Once your photo is edited in the Lightroom app, export it as a JPG and select “Largest Available Dimensions”. Organize all those exported high-res jpg photos into one album (or folder) on your phone so that they are stored in a single, easy place to find.

STEP 5 – Continue steps 1 – 4 for twelve months. At the end of the year, go to PosterJack.ca and upload all your final edited photos into their photo book layout editor. Place your images in their pre-made layouts in chronological order. You can also add captions to the photos if you’d like.

I aim to have 250 final edited photos per book and I choose the 8×10 horizontal softcover book with 120 pages.

(Side note: as much as I love taking iPhone photos of my family, I always make sure to book a professional photographer to take photos of our family once a year. Those photos are generally the ones I use for the book cover and inside the album as well.)

STEP 6 – When the layout is done, I triple check everything (layout, design, typos, accidental duplicates, etc.). Once it’s good, I submit it for print!

STEP 7 – On top of printing an annual photo book, I also print and frame four 12” x 12” family photos for our living room walls once a year. I rotate them out every time we get professional photos taken. My favourite place to print our professional family photos on our walls is at Photo Central. They have an easy online ordering system and their print quality is fantastic.

This whole process does take some time, but you will never regret the energy you spent to print your family photos!

It’s never too late to start. If you feel overwhelmed by the backlog of photos from years past, don’t let it stop you from taking baby steps. Start with the most recent year, print that album, and the excitement of receiving it in your hands will motivate you to chip away at the previous years.

Soon enough, your shelf will be filled with photo albums that I promise your kids (and grandkids!) will love looking through for years to come.

Photos only grow in value the more time passes!

PS: none of the printers I mentioned above are sponsoring this blog post – I just love them and share their links because they’re awesome!

2020: A Year in Review

Jan 1, 2021 | Photography

Well, it’s now 2021. What a year it’s been. At the risk of sounding cliché – I will say this: it was a tough one. And things are still tough now. But there are better days ahead for some of us. And there’s always hope for all of us.

As I think back to an indescribable year of photography, I have many things to celebrate. I cherished every single moment I got to spend taking photos and doing the work I love incredibly much. 2020 threatened to be a difficult year, and it was, but despite the two business shutdowns (including this super long one now), I was immeasurably thankful for continuing to do what I love to do most: take photos for all of you!

In April, when photographers were ordered to temporarily shut down their businesses for an unknown amount of time, it was devastating and scary, to say the least. Setting down my camera and watching as an invisible enemy advanced upon us was very, very strange. 

I remember thinking in the Spring how bizarre it was to wake up every morning in the new reality of living in a pandemic. It felt so surreal. We had never walked through anything like this before. That was the shutdown. The homeschooling. The isolation. The mix of emotions. All that sourdough.

That sourdough!

And suddenly, totally unexpectedly, photographers were reopened in early May. I nearly lost it (for joy!) – having thought that I’d for sure have to wait until June or even July before being reopened again. I was ecstatic to say the least! To pick up my camera again, to photograph those weddings, those newborns, those families… it meant the world to me. And to be able to earn income for my family again, especially since my income was now the only one for our household. I can’t tell you how grateful I was. I don’t think I will ever lose that feeling of gratefulness for my business, because of that experience.

The Summer and Fall were wonderful. Although half of my weddings were postponed to next year, I was still able to do a few and it turned out to be the busiest family photography season ever. Not sure if it was because no one was traveling or everyone had a renewed sense of urgency about the importance of capturing family photos… but whatever the reason, it was amazing being able to take photos again. And the photo shoot requests kept coming in. I doubled down and worked really hard to accommodate every request. It kept me busy, even through the cold fall months, when generally outdoor family portraits slow down. But not this year! Everyone was very willing to be outside in the cold to get those photos done. And I was so happy to do it.

Photo by Dwayne Larson Photography

And then it happened again. My business was shut down, this time on November 12th. Again for an indefinite amount of time. And we’re still in it, almost 2 months later, with no certain end date. It was heartbreaking having to cancel my Winter Mini Sessions, to cancel those newborn and engagement shoots, those Christmas family photos, even several of my commercial clients had to put their projects on hold. It’s devastating, but I understand why, and I’m thinking of all those who need us to be careful, to stop the spread. We are doing it for them.

Things will be ok again. But it’s still hard. Mentally we’re in it for the long haul, even after thinking that the “long haul” meant a 2-month lock down in the spring. We told ourselves “if we can just get to the end of June 2020”. And we did, and then found out it was going to last much longer… We had to keep trucking along.

And we are still trucking along. The last 2 months have been the hardest. Our family and community has personally been touched by covid death, as well as other great sufferings (both physical and mental) and we’ve seen first-hand the incredible strain our doctors & nurses are under. There’s no easy answer, and all solutions come with incredible sacrifice.

Things are tough. And things are good. There’s death and there’s life. It’s not either-or. It’s both. It’s contrast. It’s suspended tension. It’s hope floating on dark waters. We can celebrate and we can also grieve. We can be sad even if there are others who have more reasons to be sad. We can celebrate, even if they are for small, ordinary things.

Usually at this point in my post I’d list all the things I’m looking forward to in the new year. All the projects that are swimming in my head. All the ideas I have. All the things I’d love to do.

But instead I’m going to just get through these first few months of 2021. Make a business plan for all the possibilities (while recognizing that there are many impossibilities waiting for me too), focus on my family and what they need, and finally remember that contrast is good. Without light & dark (contrast) a photograph can’t exist. And so, in 2021, I resolve to continue using contrast in all that I create. Because these are the things our world is made of. I want to honour that.