Something funny happened on the way to the 21st century: Everyone became a photographer. Yet we saw the death of photography as we knew it. Quality sensors, years of specialized training, and an artfully focused eye were replaced by cheap digitizers, seconds of glancing at a manual written in the wrong language, and the utter abandonment of art as a motivation for taking photos.
As the 21st decade of aughts in the common era came to a close, another unusual trend could clearly be observed: While people were taking millions of photos, few people had any photographs to show for it. And while some few photos were worth keeping, we had also forgotten how to make pictures that go on existing even when devices were unplugged and unpowered.
We have worked so hard to digitize our lives that we have forgotten how to print the photons worth keeping. Here are 4 tips for undigitizing your most precious moments.
1 – Treat Your Photos Like Art
If you are like most people, you have a photo library full of images that are easy to ignore. But go back and take a second look, this time, through the lens of imagination. Consider what those photos would look like if they were treated like works of art. Picture them in a frame, on canvas, or on exotic paper.
Giclee print services represent a technology for printing and reproducing fine art. This is the kind of technology that can transform your boring weekend with friends into something worth remembering. So the first thing you should do when printing something previously digitized is to treat it like a work of art. You will never look at your photo library the same way again.
2 – Determine Where Your Photos Will Live
It makes little sense to have your photos printed at the local print shop, then locked in a shoebox never to be seen again. This happens because people don’t think about the picture’s life in the real world before taking it or having it printed.
The next time you take a picture, think about where you want to display it before pressing the shutter. Do you want it on the wall above the couch? Or would you prefer this one to live in a small frame on your desk.
The same applies for those pictures you have already taken. If you know this one is going to be perfect in the guest restroom, that will also inform you about the kind of framing and paper it needs. When you see a spot of empty wall crying out for a photo, you can hunt in your library for the perfect image. Every picture you display will look fabulous because it was either taken or chosen for that perfect spot. Location makes all the difference.
3 – Make Sure the Picture You Want to Display Is the Size It Needs to Be
If you have a nice outdoor image of an amusement park that is busy with motion and color and faces and life, it should probably be destined for something more expansive than a 4 X 8 that sits on the TV stand. That is too small to appreciate everything going on in the photo. Reserve that spot for a photo with a single face or item.
We also have to give some thought to the detail in the image. Match the number of megapixels produced by your camera with the appropriate print size of the final photograph. You don’t want to print pixels. You want to print pictures.
4 – Point the Camera Outward
With the modern smartphone, we stopped making photos and started taking selfies. We are staring at the lens instead of looking through the viewfinder. If you are looking for photos worth printing, look through the right end of the glass. What you are looking for is out there. And there is no shortage of art waiting to be exposed.
Make your photos great by treating them like art, finding the perfect spot for them to live, Sizing them appropriately, and looking through the part of the glass that shows you all the wonder of the world around you.
Photo Credits
Photos are pixabay public domain
Contributing Author Bio
Jenna Brown
Jenna is a freelance blogger who is mainly focused on business innovation and breaking stories in business. Jenna has been blogging since college where she studied marketing and has merged her love of keying stories into copy writing work as well as plenty of reading and writing for fun! Find and follow on her new Twitter here!
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