What do you see?
If I asked you to show me a picture of your family what would you do? Point to the wall to show me the family portrait? Point to the bookcase where there stands fabulously cute frames with years worth of memories smiling back at us? Surround me with cushions and present me with volume upon volume of amazing up to date family albums? Oh how we’d laugh, how we’d reminise.
Over the past couple of months I’ve been conducting a secret experiment and asking people that very question. First stop? Their phone. Second stop? Their computer.
“Hmm, I know they’re here somewhere, maybe this folder? Nope. Maybe this one? Dammit, where are they?”
Is this you? I only ask because a recent series of events made me do something that I hadn’t done for nearly 10 years. Print my photographs, well, most of them.
Last August, the hard drive that I stored all my images on just stopped working. Thankfully all of those images were also in my laptop, the very same laptop that was now heating up within 5 minutes of being switched on. It got me thinking, what would I do if I lost them all? Be completely devastated, that’s what; From the birth of my first daughter, her first steps, the first time she held her baby sister, that fabulous holiday to New York, to the day, not so long ago, when my husband fell asleep and they hung baby beanies off his glasses. Did I mention the traffic cone crown I wore after one too many Margaritas? All priceless memories.
So, after another couple of months of me not doing anything about it, an email arrived from Photobox offering me 50% off their photobooks and 1 month to do it. I ordered two 100 page square albums and spent Christmas week sifting through nearly 10,000 images. Yes, 10,000! 10,000 memories. 10,000 reasons for living. 10,000 regrets if I lost them. Eventually I managed to get down to 500 images per book but it was a struggle. Why on earth did I wait 10 years to do this? I wouldn’t mind, I’m a photographer! I’m constantly trying to convince my clients to choose the package that gives you prints and not just a cd with the images on but it’s definitely a case of “Do as I say and not as I do.”
A week after I sent the order, I’ll never forget the Saturday morning when they arrived. I cried. Buckets. The total relief that flooded over me was totally unexpected. We spent a good hour looking through them both and talking about this time and that. The glossy pages, the new book smell, the hardbacked with hundreds of snapshots of our little and sometimes hilarious life together. In a perfect world,where bills didn’t need to be paid, I would have ordered copies for the girls and kept them in their memory chest for when they leave home. Currently they just have a cd with the images burnt on it but at some point this year I will rectify the situation for them. I will. I’ve promised the girls that each Christmas, from now on, we will make that years photobook to go with the rest. A new family tradition.
I implore you to not wait until something devastating happens to those images trapped in your phone or on your computer. Do something with them. The team over at Photobox will print from 1 to 10,001 images, they’ll give you a range of products to choose from and they’ll ensure that those memories live a full life to be passed from generation to generation. They are also offering one lucky TMK reader the chance to win a photobook all of their very own, just follow the steps below!
3 weeks ago my computer died. Completely.
Look around.
What do you see?
[stextbox id=”tmk-box”]TO WIN READ ON All you need to do is like TMK and Photobox using the handy buttons below! [/stextbox]
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Think big and reach for the stars,
Vix
