Keep Family Photos Pristine With A Professionally Printed Photo Book

Everyone is a photographic expert since the introduction of point and click auto focus cameras, and the digital revolution has improved the chances of taking a professional looking shot even by the most unsure of camera users. Now that the move from film to digital has been fully embraced and the cost of developing pictures have come down there seems to be a million times more photographs in a personal collection. We consider the different ways to archive and display photographs from digital photo frame to printed photo book and wonder if they will ever replace the traditional family photo album.

The traditional photo albums, full of images printed on photographic paper have been the mainstay of photographic collections in homes around the world since the advent of photography. My own personal collection, amounting to an astonishing forty or so albums, houses images of several generations of my family. The earliest ones in my possession are sepia toned and deeply vignetted depicting long gone relatives from the late 1800s. Each of these photographs has a certain smooth quality from a long exposure and the subjects are stiff from bracing themselves whilst the photographic plate was exposed to avoid blurring. The later ones in the collection are super saturated with colour and show every minute detail from blade of grass to pores on the skin.

As a family we often sit around and go through the photos, and the change in aesthetic quality never fails to amaze us; but the presentation has always been the same. Picture either stuck into an album, or in later years, slid into a plastic pocket as part of an album. Some photographs survive the constant flicking through, others have become crumpled or faded and some have reacted with the adhesive causing the picture to deteriorate. Because these images are so precious I've always wished there was a way of preserving them better, or at least having a good enough reproduction so that the original photographs can be stored and preserved.

A digital photo frame is a slice of new technology that offers a solution for being able to both store and see photographs without them becoming damaged. By putting images onto a memory card or flash drive you can create albums just as you always would, and depending on the memory available, store multiple albums on one card or drive. Don't be fooled into thinking that it can only be used for your latest digital photographs either, most photographic developers offer a service where negatives from camera film and even original photos can be digitised and saved to disk. The constant rotation may be a bit much for a whole family back catalogue, but for favourite photographs of families, friends and holiday destinations, it is perfect.

For a comprehensive storage solution and an up to date way to share photographs, the photo book is an ideal medium. Much like the books produced by artists to showcase a collection of images, the photo book houses and displays photographs professionally and the format is intended to be heavily used, so for years to come the family can keep flicking through the pages and the volumes and watch a family tree grow. I believe that this format has greater longevity than the digital photo frame as it is a solid medium, but I don't think it will replace the actual printing of photographs as individual items. There is something tactile and precious about a printed picture, and at best guess the photo book will act as a way to view pictures without harm, whilst the originals are kept for special occasions.

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