After your wedding I will deliver your photographs to you in mainly a digital format. Depending on which package you have chosen there may be a few prints included from the day. Digital files are brilliant because they’re the most high quality photographs that we currently have. They’re non exhaustive, you can keep getting prints and albums made and the quality of your digital photographs will remain the same. I love film photography but I think the invention of the digital camera was one of the best things ever. After you’ve gone through all your images for the first time on your online gallery or on your USB, you may wonder about the best way to protect these photographs so they outlast you and your future children, grandchildren or relatives can enjoy them too. One of my favourite things about photographs is that they get more valuable with time. I think having a photographer on your wedding is extremely important and the photographs become historical documents. It’s really important that we look after our memories so I’ve complied a helpful list of things you can do to help preserve your wedding photographs and to ensure you’re getting the most out of them.
Back up your back ups
Whether your photographs are delivered via an online gallery, USB or both, I would always advise that you keep at least two digital back ups. Digital back ups are my life. Nothing scares me more than losing photographs to a hard drive or card failure. For this reason, on your wedding day I shoot with two memory cards in each of my cameras so there is an instant back up of every image if one of my cameras or memory cards was to fail. When I get home I copy your photographs onto two external Hard drives, one of which is kept at my parents house just in case of a house fire. I also don’t delete your photographs off my memory card until I’ve edited your images. This is my fool proof way of ensuring that I don’t lose any photographs from a wedding day or while I’m editing them. After the wedding I will upload the edited photographs to your online gallery. At the moment I keep galleries up for life. This means the lifetime of my business, or the lifetime of my gallery website. This is a good backup but I’d really urge you not to rely on this alone. I don’t own the website that I use to deliver wedding galleries so they could decide to take their website offline at any point (this is quite unlikely but could happen). For this reason I would always encourage you to back up your wedding photographs digitally multiple times, to a couple of external hard drives and memory sticks. Please don’t just upload them to Facebook and think this is a good enough back up, Facebook destroys image quality so they really won’t be the same!
Print your photographs
Prints are the ultimate way to ensure that your wedding photographs last. It also means that you don’t just look at them a couple of times a year, prints mean you can decorate your house with them if you want to, or make your own wedding album to place on your coffee table and flip through whenever you have a spare moment. I personally have a ridiculous amount of prints and I’m really happy I got them all, they don’t take up much space, and I have them dotted all around my house which gives it a really personal touch. I would encourage you to stay away from places like Snapfish or Boots for your prints, they’re both very cheap suppliers however I promise, as with most things, this will be reflected in the quality. You may not be able to tell now but in a couple of years time they will have faded and won’t look exactly as you remember them. I offer prints through my online gallery with a professional printers who I use for my own personal prints too. These prints will outlast us all, provided they are looked after, ie. Not left in direct sunlight for extended periods of time!
Invest in a wedding album
I will always be a big fan of wedding albums, this to me is how wedding photographs are meant to be looked at. They’re meant to be flipped through at your leisure with your partner and your family, each of you pointing at different photographs from your wedding saying “do you remember that?!”. I offer handmade wedding albums which make the perfect anniversary gift, especially for your first wedding anniversary which is actually called the paper anniversary. All of my couples who have ordered an album have always been really happy with them, they are a small piece of luxury and a lasting heirloom from your wedding day.
I hope this post has helped you think about what you will do with your wedding photographs after you receive them. It is never too late to sort out your digital back ups or order a wedding album. You’re also always able to purchase prints through my online gallery, if this is something you’ve been meaning to do for a while and can’t remember your log in, then just drop me a message and I’ll send it over for you!
Comments