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July 5

How to Make the Most of Your Photos

How to make the most of your photos

If you’re anything like us you have tens of thousands of photos on your computer or various hard drives right now. Of that you probably have a few favourites… from each and every trip or life event in your life ?. And that probably amounts to a few hundred favourites. 

So they’re on your computer – but how often do you take the time to appreciate them? Like truly, sit down and look through them to value both the effort that went into making the photo, as well as the memory that you were preserving in the process. Isn’t this process of valuing and reminiscing why we take photos? 

If this is you then you’re not alone. In fact, we’re as much to blame as anyone… Of our hundreds of favourites only a small fraction of those make it into our everyday life. So maybe this blog is a little reminder for us to do some of these things too ?. 

Anyway – on to the fun stuff. We’re going to give you 3 great ways to enjoy your photos. Are there more? Yes! Of course! And however you choose to appreciate your images is entirely up to you. But the world is awash with choices, so we’re trying to give you options for things you might actually be able to achieve. Here are our faves:


1. Make a book.

Actually, make lots of books. Make one for every trip, one for every year of your kiddos lives, one for every dog you’ve ever fostered, one for every city or house you’ve ever lived in. To date we have 3 holiday / trip books, one wedding album – as in the one that everyone signs, our incredible wedding photos are still, you guessed it, on our computer, and 3 books for the first years of our girls’ life.

I never really thought this would be the case (I mean, how often did you look through an actual photo album back in the day?), but we use these books a lot. And I mean, a lot. Particularly the ones of our children. They are the beloved gift for our families each year and we always end in a grand scramble to get them done in time. But they are so worth it. Our children look through them probably every week and our families love the chance to share those moments with their friends, especially because we live so far away. 

The books of our holidays are pulled out every few months and we sit and tell our kids stories, reminisce with each other about what happened and how bizarre some of our experiences were, and generally just enjoy the stroll down memory lane. Each book has a story and the best part is that every time you look the story changes, just a little. 

So our advice – it is 100% worth your time, and 100% worth your money. Having a deadline helps – which is why we will always have more books of our kids than our travels (thanks Christmas). Maybe one day we’ll make it a rule that we make a book after every trip. One day…

On a more practical note, there are many different printing options out there. We personally use Blurb, but it’s purely out of convenience. We love that we can create them and send them directly for printing all from Lightroom. The quality is lovely, but the price is high (insider tip: wait for a sale). If we had the time, we would consider researching alternatives like Create My Books, Book Baby, or Lulu. If you’ve had success with a particular company before though we’d love your feedback below. Also if you’d like for us to order from a few different companies and give you our feedback we can do that too! Just let us know in the comments and if we have enough interest we’ll make it happen!


2. Print and hang:

Print your photos, frame and hang them on the wall. Keep them forever or make a pact to change them out for new prints every year. Have different sizes, setups and frame colours so you can use them in different parts of your house! As it stands we have over 6 large (I mean 24” x 36”) prints in our house, and probably a dozen or so medium sized ones. We’d love to have some small montages as well (ok I’ll add it to our list of projects). It’s also time we switched some of those prints out.

We’ve had more adventures, and our photography has improved since we hung these over 4 years ago. We have so many different options though we’re so overwhelmed by choice. But the knowledge that our choices aren’t permanent is very liberating and we’ve been able to narrow down the list of photos that are up next. 

Why do we love this? Well who doesn’t want to wander your house and be reminded of the kick ass event you experienced and your kick ass photography? They are your memories to enjoy, so enjoy them ☺️. 

We printed our prints at Costco – good prices but limited for size choices, and we bought frames from Michaels. IKEA have good frame alternatives, and if you’re looking for amazing quality custom prints, a local store like Vistek here in Calgary would be able to help you with much greater flexibility. Don’t forget that you also have the option to canvas print (again Costco, Walmart etc can do this) or one of the newest trends that we’re dying to try is printing on metal! Again – let us know if you want us to try this out and give you some feedback!


3. Have a special folder on your computer for your very best shots:

This is the last thing that we do. We have a “**Favourites” folder on our computer and it contains all of our 4 and 5 star photos (among other photos now, it needs cleaning up – project #3).

Why do we love this? Well it’s a Dropbox folder and my husband and I share a Dropbox account. So this means that we both have these images on our laptops wherever we are. And because they are just our best and most favourite (and always at the top – because of our **), we are happy to open them en-mass and show them off. We don’t have to open an application per se (like a big program like Lightroom) and these are our final edited copies, so we don’t have to worry about future changes to them. We always save full size images, so we can use them to print, or to send to family or post online with a simple export and reduce size. They are always at our fingertips and as a result we USE THEM!
???

Just remember to only do this with your ultimate favourites ?.


So these are the three ways that we personally use and love and recommend for you to make the most of your photography. Just remember that taking the photo is only half the battle, so less is more. The less photos you take the more photos you will be able to enjoy. 


We seriously can’t wait to hear from you now about what YOU love to do with your images!! Comment below!

Thanks again for reading, and as always, happy snapping! ?


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  1. I’ve been creating photo books straight from iPhoto on my Mac for years. I give them as special occasion gifts and keep them as my own memory albums. Everyone loves them! Last year Apple switched to a new system and I haven’t gotten around to trying it yet…I would appreciate any input on their new product or other photo book companies for ease of use, price and quality. Thanks!

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