Printing - escaping digital

A photo frame in my office

For many years, all of the photos I took only existed in the digital realm. People did say I should print them out.

I didn’t realise the effect it would have. Selecting photos to print is very therapeutic. You remember the time the pictures were taken, and you also view the images more critically if they’re going to be in a book or on a wall. I realised a long time ago that I needed to try harder. My photos that looked ok on a phone screen fell apart sometimes when viewed at larger sizes. That was one of the reasons I started this website - to look at what I needed to do to improve.

I have many photo frames around the house these days. They tend to be in themed groups, but the one in my office, which contains 32 6x4 prints, has themed rows.

Many of my other frames have fewer images but larger sizes, and I’m happy that I have some photos printed at A3 size that actually look good!

The photobook shelf showing the Instagram subscription books covering 2013 to 2024.

In addition to printing photos for frames around the house, I also printed them in books. I discovered a service called ChatBooks which let you connect Instagram and would send a book to print every time I went past 60 photos. Because I was aware this was happening, my Instagram account only contained photos I’d like to be printed and not random social media stuff.

Sadly, Instagram has cut off companies from running services like that, so after 43 volumes and 11 years of photos, it has come to an end.

I will continue manually and keep printing 6” square books every time I have 60 new photos.

These books were a pleasure to receive in the post and because the dates are on the spines, it’s nice to jump into a time period to see what was happening back then.

So, don’t let your photos live on your phone - print some!