Print Photography in a Digital Age

Person in white shirt and jeans sorting through printed photographs of plants and architecture spread across a wooden table.

Do you have your digital photos printed? Use an actual print camera to take pictures that need to be developed? Do you develop and process your own film? In the digital age, it can be all too simple to just tap the button on our smart phone. We take pictures that linger in the digital ether and never get printed in a physical format. Sometimes they never even get looked at again. When you have thousands of pictures on your phone—family, pets, vacations, that beautiful flower, or your daughter’s very first bike ride—it’s easy to just let them melt into the background of your mind. All the experiences of our lives that we deem worthy of remembering are so quick to forget.

During my undergraduate days, I focused on art and attended several photography courses. I loved it. I would bring my Canon Rebel G with me everywhere, taking a picture of whatever struck me as interesting at that moment. I learned to develop my own film and spent hours in the photography lab in the darkroom. When I started grad school full time to become a librarian, I was also working full time. I left my camera on the shelf. Without realizing it, I stopped taking photos and developing them. I relied on the camera of my smart phone, which was new in the very early 2000s. Then, I stopped printing pictures altogether. Fast forward twenty years, throw in becoming a mom, and I have rediscovered my love for the printed photo.

Now, while I still use my phone to take pictures, I go through them and pick the ones I love. It’s a very intentional process. I delete the garbage, the things that don’t need to take up space in my cluttered life. This curation allows me to remember what was important, like an early spring day playing in the backyard on the new bouncy ball. Those are the ones I print. I collect them and keep them in a safe place. I frame them and hang them. The walls of my home tell countless stories now. I’ve run out of space, so I trade them out when I print more. Life is busy, but the ones that don’t make it to the walls stay safely tucked away. One day I will arrange them into books that show a life lived - a full life of experiences to treasure. And should anything ever happen, like digital failure, I will have that tangible reminder of the things that I don’t want to lose.

Are you interested in learning more about photography? Check out these awesome resources that are available at the Mercer County Library System today!