Last month I hosted a mother’s
night out event for North Central Parenting Group and gave a short presentation
about how to organize and display your family photographs. The women who attended gave great feedback
and made it apparent that the number of images they have of their children is
overwhelming and causes them stress.
The perspective I have on this
subject comes from having one son who is grown and in college and another who
is two years away from leaving our home.
My children were babies before there were iphones with cameras. In order to take pictures we had to
plan to bring the camera, remember to get it out, load a roll of film in a
camera and then take it to get developed which usually yielded about 10
acceptable pictures from a roll of 36.
I know it seems like it was the “olden days”, as my kids like to point
out, and that we have come so far since then. But, one positive of the old time technology of film was
that we had far fewer pictures to decide how to display. We threw away the bad ones and stuck the
rest in a photo album (maybe a scrapbook with cute sayings and stickers if we
were crafty). Once every year or
two we had our children professionally photographed, ordered one or two
portraits (and maybe an album if they were really cute) and hung them up in our
house. Even in my home, and as a
professional photographer I only have portraits of my kids from about every
year or so.
The dawn of digital has led to an
extreme increase in the number of images that are produced documenting one
child’s growth from newborn to adulthood.
Whether they are snapshots that parents take of their child or
professional images, it is likely the number is in the thousands by the time
the child reaches the age of two.
With the daily duties it takes to raise a child in today’s world
(doctors appointments, parenting classes, play groups, feeding, shopping,
bathing, getting them to sleep, getting them in the right music/gym/mom and tot
class) this only adds to a feeling of anxiety. What I would like to do here is give you a way to organize
and display the images of your family and children, and perhaps rethink why and
when you have them photographed in the first place.
First, let’s address how many of
your own snapshots you take of your child. Every time you go to a park, playgroup or the zoo, do you
feel like you need to whip out your phone and document it? What is the purpose? Is it to share on social media? By the way, that is just fine, but it
will lead to your device being completely jammed up and more work for you in
the end. So, when should you bring
out your phone or camera and document those fun, spontaneous moments so that
you can remember? I would say
holidays are a good place to start.
And vacations. And family
visits. And birthdays. But if you
have 25 from each of those events you would have around 200 per year. That is too many. So here is a guide to get your existing
snapshots organized. Then stop
taking so many from here on out.
Rather than pulling out your phone all the time, maybe just enjoy the
moment. Childhood goes quickly.
So you have a year or two or three
worth of snapshots of your child or children. Where should you start? What can you do with them?
1.
Get all the images off your device. Do this once every month or so. Download them to your computer and also
save on an external hard drive because computers crash and that is sad.
2.
Put the images in a folder labeled with whatever
event it is (Halloween 2016, Johnny’s First bday, etc.).
3.
Work backwards so you are not overwhelmed. Since it is only March of 2017, 2017
should be easy and not overwhelming at all. Next do 2016 because you can complete that one and make a
scrapbook.
4.
Go through each image you have by labeled folder
and delete the ones you don’t love.
Be brutal and only save a few from each event. (you don’t need 25 from
Halloween, First bday maybe that many, but not every playgroup). Go through again and delete more. Your goal is to end up with around 60
per year.
5.
Once you are finished with one year, make a
book. If you have a Mac, ibook is
a really simple, easy way to make a scrapbook with text. And you simply click and order and it
is delivered in about a week. If
you don’t have a Mac, get one.
Just kidding, but they really are best for consumers to organize and
arrange their own images. There
are other sites where you can make scrapbooks and albums like Snapfish. Now you have a year of images in a
scrapbook and something you and your family can look through together!
6.
Other ideas for displaying your images that you
absolutely love are: a calendar (makes a great gift for grandparents who still
use paper calendars), small frames around your home, bulletin boards, digital
frame, prints to be put under glass on a table in your home.
Hopefully, that helps. This project is not meant to be done
all in one night! And your
scrapbook does not have to be a work of art or something you have seen on
Pinterest. Just do the best you
can. Work maybe an hour while the
kids are napping or in the evening after bedtime a couple of times per week
until you are caught up. If you
start this now and limit the number of images you take throughout the year, it
will never get out of control again!
Now, onto what to do with the professional images.
If you go by what is all over
Pinterest and Instagram and Facebook, it seems like in order to be a good
mother, you need to have your children photographed every few months in some
kind of very staged and themed set up.
Whether it is a newborn wearing a hat to make him look like a bear cub,
a baby smashing their first birthday cake or kids in their Halloween costumes,
Christmas outfits, with Easter bunnies, or in a lemonade stand, it seems like a
child is professionally photographed at least 8 times by the time she reaches
her second birthday. What I
challenge you to think about is, what is the point to all of these
sessions? Do you have a goal from
each one or do you just gather these hundreds or thousands of images on your hard
drive and share them on social media, maybe print a few holiday cards or birth
announcements and then feel overwhelmed about how to actually showcase your
favorites (if you can even decide which ones those are)? If you are paying for all of these sessions,
maybe take that money, save up and invest in excellent portraits of milestone
ages (see below) and do all the other pictures yourself.
There are a couple types of professional
photographers you may have encountered.
The first will help you choose the images to display and deliver final
portraits and/or albums to you so all you have to do is hang them up. That is super cool and leaves no work
for you! If that is the type of
photographer you have worked with, you can skip down to where I discuss milestone
ages.
If your photographer did not help
you to choose which images to print or print them for you, you have some work
to do. First, you need to decide
which one or two from each milestone age to have printed. I would suggest that you choose one
larger and one smaller (one main wall portrait and one smaller, or a triptych
that tells a story). You can do a
smaller desk portrait of one or two and an album with the others. Once you have picked the couple of
favorites you would like to have printed as portraits, you will need to choose
the size and lab. Remember,
cheaper labs like Walmart and Costco will look cheap. If you want to start a beautiful gallery, choose a quality
lab. Tempe Camera is a local lab
that will help you to size, crop, and print the images and offers different
types of fine art paper options. I
have listed contact info and other resources for this below.
If all that work stresses you out,
going forward you might want to rethink your choice of photographer from one
who simply gives you the digital files and doesn’t offer any help with regard
to which images to have printed and how or where to print them. If you are like me, I don’t like to pay
for a service only to have more work to do. I would rather spend a bit more and have the professional use
their professional skills and resources to help me have something of excellent
quality.
Remember, your child is growing and
from birth to senior portrait if you have her professionally photographed once
per year, you will have 18 portraits by the time she graduates from high
school. Your goal should be to add
to your gallery rather than replace precious portraits from the younger
years. So, what are the milestone
ages that you should have your child photographed? In other words, if I were not a professional photographer,
what ages would I pay to have a professional photographer document my children
and pay for beautiful portraits to add to my gallery?
Here is my list of milestone ages
to have your child photographed. Obviously,
space apart for development according to when you had your last session. These can be done as a separate
portrait if you have larger walls or combined with siblings to accomplish two
things at once (except maybe when they are really, really impactful on their
own like toddler, missing teeth and senior portraits):
1.
Infant (0-6 months) Some people like the brand newborn, but I prefer when the
baby can actually track, is chubby and has a face that will be recognizable
later in their life. Plus, you
feel a little less stressed at the session when you are not one or two weeks
post partum.
2.
Toddler (12-36 months) Walking around, talking and able to communicate a little and
engage. Has a variety of
expressions and a developed personality.
3.
Small Child (4-5 years) Still has a bit of a
baby face. Very well developed
vocabulary and interests. Usually
preschool age before front teeth fall out.
4.
Lost Teeth (6-7 years) One of my favorite ages
and a great transitional portrait from a small child to the one with the big
teeth.
5.
Big Kid, Tween (9-12 years) Once you have an 18
year old, these kids will look little to you. I actually also like braces because the kids still look
little while they are wearing them.
6.
Teen (13-16 years) This is a good age because you
have a kid who is still a kid but thinks and acts like they are not. They have their own defined
personalities and opinions (whether you like it or not).
7.
Senior Portrait (17-18 years) This is the last
portrait of childhood. They are
graduating high school and about to embark on their own life, away from
you.
I find it helpful to think about
creating a portrait gallery that you will add to over time rather than just do willy-nilly
sessions with multiple photographers who all have different styles. For those of you who like consistency
and would like a photographic style that will stand the test of time, choose a
photographer whose style is more classic and will pleasing to you in the long
term. There are many trends in
photography. By definition, a
trend will go out of style, so it is best to stay away from photographers whose
bulk of work is made up of images that are very trendy. For example, one trend is to severely back
light a subject, obscuring the face in favor of the sun shining behind her. Another trend is to dress up newborns
in funny hats or contort them or put them in bowls or baskets or slings. Props are also distracting. If you want something in the image to
represent your child’s age, I recommend something meaningful to you and them,
like a favorite blanket, doll or book.
I tend to gravitate toward a style that will be pleasing in 50 years or
would have been 50 years ago.
One
element of creating pleasing wall displays is to frame the portraits in an
elegant aesthetic that will frame and highlight the images and blend with your
décor. Professional framing can
make a big difference in how finished your display looks. Cheap framing looks cheap and can ruin
the actual portraits over time.
Choose a professional frame shop (not Michael’s or Aaron Brothers) that
specializes in framing art and knows conservation methods. It does not have to be expensive and
you can limit the cost by choosing frames that are smaller and less
ornate.
In
order to determine what sizes and displays would be appropriate for the
professional images of your children and family, your home décor and space
should be taken into account. You
don’t need to have a dedicated wall upon which to hang all of the professional
images you choose to have printed as portraits. Here are some ideas for display that I have seen and use
myself:
1.
One significant size portrait in a defined space
or over a piece of furniture (sofa, console table, fireplace, entryway, between
two light fixtures).
2.
Different sizes and orientations down a hallway
or up a staircase.
3.
Gallery wall as a showcase wall – small or large
with multiple images in different sizes and orientations in a family gathering
spot. (These are the images that make you happy so you should see them often.)
4.
Casual leaning on top of a bookcase or shelving.
5.
In a bathroom – water or beach images work well
here.
6.
Child’s bedroom – infant images for nursery and
other happy images great in here as well.
I would also recommend having
albums created from your professional images as well. As mentioned above, you will not frame all of the images
from your professional images as portraits for your walls, but having albums
and books will document these sessions for you so that over time you have a
great representation of your child’s growth.
In my studio, I offer the full
service experience because I believe you should have beautiful, timeless images
of your children and you don’t need any extra work in your busy life. From talking with you prior to your
session in order to understand your goals (or just help you define what those
should be), to expertly photographing your child, to helping you choose the
best images for display and where they should hang in your home, to printing
your portraits in the most beautiful and archival manner, to helping you choose
the frames that will best highlight your portraits, it is a full service,
stress-free experience. The only
thing left for you to do is pay and hang your portraits on the wall. I charge appropriately for what I give
you but feel strongly that you definitely get what you pay for. When you account for money that you
might spend on mini sessions throughout the year, where you don’t love any
images and then your time you have to spend to figure out which one to print,
where to take it and the cost of printing and framing, a full service
experience by an expert photographer is well worth the price. But, if you choose to go elsewhere I
will not be offended. Everyone has
different tastes and different budgets.
If you need resources to be able to print and display the images of your
children, here you go:
Printing – I recommend an art paper for quality and timeless
feel. If you choose to print on a
canvas, framing it will look more finished and refined.
1.
Tempe Camera will sit down with you and help you
size and choose an appropriate medium to print images, either professional or
your own snaps. www.Tempecamera.biz 606 West University Drive, Tempe AZ 85281
480.966.6954
2.
Artifact Uprising – if the images are already
sized and ready to go this is nice quality but no one-on-one help. www.artifactuprising.com
3.
Cheap labs look cheap. You get what you pay for. Walmart and Costco offer cheap canvas wraps that will likely
fade in a few years.
Albums – Create scrapbooks of your own snaps or of professional
images that you are not going to hang on your wall (if photographer did not
offer album).
1.
Ibooks is a great resource if you have a mac. You can create book and upload right
from iphoto. Perfect for your own snaps.
2.
Snapfish and other online sites have album
options perfect for you own snaps.
3.
Artifact Uprising – higher quality albums for
professional images. You have to
do all of the layout and design work but not too complicated. www.artifactuprising.com
Framing – professional framing adds a finished element,
incorporating your portraits with your hoe décor and personal style.
1.
The Art of Framing 5018 North Central Avenue
602.277.3112. They have a wide
variety of cool frames and will offer help in which ones will look best within
your budget. Choose archival mattes
and uv glass for great preservation.
2.
Michael’s and Aaron Brother’s are not
great. Not archival materials and
glass with chemicals.
in a hallway
same family hallway
more from this lovely family
accent wall behind couch
small hallway
in a bath
leaning on a bookcase
accent wall in a living room/entry
up a staircase
over a console table
under glass on a table
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