Make Prints Great Again (MPGA)

Think with me for a moment; What do we know about the dark ages? Almost nothing, right? Except that there were some really talented painters, a bunch of wars, and probably 17 strains of Covid that they couldn’t do anything about. Aren’t we lucky to live in the era we do? Seriously; think about it. You’re sitting on a toilet right now (66% chance anyways), reading a blog post about a time we know almost nothing about. And if you care enough, you can just research it and learn everything there is to know about it. Never in human history has information been so accessible. (Humour me - we’re getting there.) Now think of what would happen if ALL the power went out. I don’t mean BC Hydro hit a snag, or a bad driver took out a power pole. I mean genuine catastrophe, game over, lights out, canned food and boiled water, rebuild will take decades kind of crash. As unlikely as it is, there is a non-zero chance of that happening. Where does the information stored on our hundreds of billions of hard drives go in a situation like that? The internet, and all its contents disappear in the blink of an eye. This also means your backups fail too, and you lose all your precious facebook memories and snap streaks. 

Now let me try to make this a little more personal. What if your hard drive dies. What if you lose every piece of information you have saved? Granted the first few things you’ll likely do is head to a repair store - but what if they can’t recover the data? What happens to the hundreds, or thousands, of images you have saved of your family, your friends, your memories and your experiences? I’ll rip this bandaid off for you. They disappear. Now i’m not after a “woe is me. the world is ending” kind of vibe here, but honestly; if you lost all of that information, would you be upset? 

Of course you would; and anyone who says otherwise is lying to themselves. 

What is the solution then? Well, seeing as we’re in the 21st century, the practical solution is backing things up to the cloud - or another hard drive. Both of which mind you have the same chance as your first hard drive of failing. But what about print? Why not print things every year. Be realistic, you don’t need to have 10,378 photos hanging on your walls, but can you not pluck your favourite 12 off of Facebook and plug them into a $5.00 frame from Walmart? Absolutely you can. And i’ll tell you something wild. You’ll LOVE those photos. They will be the ones you see every morning on your way out the door, and every evening when you come home from a long day. That level of emotional connection is gone with digital. Sure you’ve got the option to do this with every photo I provide to you, but do you? Why not? Remember when that weird guy at work would pull out 15 wallet sized images of an ugly baby in a glamour studio? The overwhelming smell of formula and soft baby shit drafting up your nostrils as he shoves the entire album into your face at the water cooler? That is how it looks when you pass a digital album on your phone to another person, and tell them to “scroll to the right (flicking your finger for demonstration) until you see the cat photos.” Printing things gives people the opportunity to admire the art on their own terms when they notice the images on your desk or the walls. And let’s be clear here; it is just that - Art. 

I’ll pose a question to the married people here. How many times do you sit down and scroll through your Engagement photoshoot, even your Wedding photos? Probably less than once a year. Now answer me this - How often do you stop for a second in your hallway and look at the photo that is printed in a 4x6 from a night out with your girlfriends? That’s what I thought. 

Now, I should clarify, I am not speaking form a position of ignorance - I DO IT TO. Minus the engagement photos, because I don’t have any of those. One of the most satisfying things I ever started doing as photographer was printing a few favourite photo’s I’ve snapped in the year, and hanging them in my house. Not only do I get to relive some of my favourite moments, but I get the natural opportunity to tell new friends some of my most cherished stories. Like the time I was famished and wandered into a café in London. I wound up with a fancy meal, and the below image. - DM me if you want the dirty details, it’s a great story. 

There is one more huge benefit to printing images that I think is overlooked 99% of the time in todays world. It’s a physical object. A thing. You can unwrap it, touch it, smell it, hold it. It forces you to feel more senses than holding your iPhone 15 and ignoring your partner. It’s the reason kids love gifts on Christmas - they’re things! I’d even go as far as to comment it’s the reason your dating life sucks. You see a digital photo of someone on Tinder or Bumble or whatever is being used today, and then in person they are completely different. The emotion created by the digital image of someone and the actual vibes they give off are two totally different things. 

I pride myself in freezing time for my clients. For my family clients; they get to look back on a stage of their children’s lives that they may never get to relive again. But with prints, the emotion and memories are there, on the walls of their home, forever . For my automotive clients; I get to showcase a period of their build that they may never go back to. I know for myself there was a sweet spot in building my RX7 when everything just felt dialled. Shortly after that I bolted on performance parts and lost that feeling forever. I lost the photos of that point in time. They died on an old hard drive. I truly understand the feeling of “loosing the memories.” If I had have printed those images, I’d have a beautiful memoir of the perfect afternoon of driving backroads in a car purposefully built for enjoyment. It’s an afternoon I think of constantly, but I can do only that, think of it.