Why Printed Photos are So Important—Even to This Day

Kids today really don’t know the pain of waiting for photos to be printed before looking at them. When holding freshly printed photographs, we usually remember the moments that were taken and the memories associated with them. Those photos became mementos we kept in albums or boxes, waiting to be pulled out and looked through.

Digital just doesn’t give the same effect. It’s all in the Cloud, or on social media.

Some more artistic people would make scrapbooks around their photos, attaching other little trinkets, headlines, and mementos to the pages telling the story. The saying “A picture is worth 1,000 words” is a great one.

Holding a photograph speaks to your emotions. Have you ever held a black and white photo of your grandparents or great-grandparents? The nostalgia that surrounds that photo can’t compare to the one you see on a screen. In a printed photo, it’s almost like a part of the person’s soul illuminates from the photograph when you hold it and look into their eyes.

Nowadays with digital technology, no one thinks their computer or smartphone is going to crash; they don’t think their photos may be lost forever. When you save a photo online, the resolution may be changed to save space, so it may not be exactly as you took it at the time.

If you need even more reasons why you ought to get your photos printed, here are three:

A Physical Memory 

Printed photos become something our future generations can touch and look closely into. It’s displayed in an album, on a wall, on a desk, or in a scrapbook. There’s no searching through various digital files deep in the depths of online archives you took years ago on your phone. 

Photos create conversation. You can sit your family around a kitchen table or in the living room with a photo album and tell stories about the photos you flip through. It isn’t the same as trying to sit around a computer or pass a mobile device around. 

If you absolutely insist on relying on modern technology, you can always get digital copies as well as physical copies. That way you’re covered. 

Connecting People to Places, Experiences, and Emotions

When you hold a photo in your hands from, say, 20 years ago, you get a feeling, don’t you? Emotions may come to you regarding that moment, the experience you had when the photo was taken, and where it was taken to begin with. It could have been a school trip abroad, or a picture with a family member who has since passed away, or even baby photos that you make this connection to. 

Since we live in such a fast-paced world now, there isn’t always time to flip through images in a digital device. You may not give the same emotional effect or the same connection as you do when you are holding a physical photograph right at your fingertips. 

Take a moment to stop and relive these precious times in your life. 

Printed Memories Gives Us Strength

When we lose sight of our purpose in life or we have our low days, we can forget how fortunate we are and how far we have come in our lives. Some of us have been through some tough times, but when we look at the photos of back then to now, it gives us hope as to how far we’ve come and how much we’ve struggled, but we still came out swinging and stronger than ever. 

It touches our hearts when we look at certain photographs, knowing that it’s going to be okay no matter how bad things seem right now. We want to preserve the good memories to help get through the bad. All of those precious moments are an essential part of us. They bring people together, and make love grow stronger. 

Creative Commons Attribution: Permission is granted to repost this article in its entirety with credit to Photos by Cheryl and a clickable link back to this page.