reasons that might convince you

The importance of print.

Print is inarguably one of the most valuable mediums for a photographer.

I think photographers know and recognize this yet ironically, I find many shying away from printing their own photos.

Perhaps it seems daunting - its another chore to add onto the pile of things to do.

There’s a cost: money and time associated with getting something printed is a commitment.

Many artists don’t want to make this leap.

They think it’ll come to them when the right time is here.

Well…I can’t force you to print your photos.

But perhaps this short list of reasons might convince you.

Selective process.

Not everything deserves to be printed.

When sorting through photos there’s an inherent selective process to dwindle down the excess. It’s akin to culling your photography in lightroom or capture one.

“Is this photo good enough?”

“Does this photo deserve a physical form?”

While doing so, you actually make yourself a better photographer. The next time you go back into the field, you’ll take less useless photos. With print in mind, your thoughts will be shadowed by the idea, “will this photo be good enough to be printed?” This internal culling will slowly allow one to take less useless photos and more print worthy photos.

Similarly, many look only at the downsides of print. The money, the time, the cost. What people don’t realize is that this investment actually benefits the investor. Because it costs something tangible, you’re instantly committed. Anything less than perfection would mean a waste of your investment. This ensures you’ll come out with something quality that you’ll love and appreciate, rather than some half baked project.

Photos make for great gifts.

Imagine picking up your phone, scrolling endlessly through the vacuum that is instagram.

As you’re doing so, you’re sifting through hundreds of bad photos and perhaps hundreds of good ones.

Who knows? You don’t actually have time to look.

But now imagine your friend approaches you. He or she gifts you an 8x10 print of a photo from your last summer camping trip together.

Instantly it grabs your attention. You remember the warm summer sun, the laughs, and the smiles.

When given something physical, people have to sit down and look at it. A physical print begs for attention much like your dog does.

By printing a photo you immortalize a memory. A physical photo is much harder to get rid of than a digital copy. Imagine trying to throw away the photo from your summer camping trip. It would be like throwing away the memory itself.

This means people are much less likely to throw photos away and more likely to frame and hang the photos on their wall. In doing so, many more people will get to see it and appreciate it than on social media.

For the artist, you’ve created an important psychological safety net.

By printing your photos and seeing the reactions of people whom you’ve shared it with, things become real. As opposed to instagram and social media, what you do actually begins to matter.

For the artist, there is nothing more important.

Naturally, if you think your work doesn’t matter, you’re not going to want to do it. Therefore, printing reinforces the art and fuels the fire. It’s why we do this in the first place.

The cliche - it’s fun and rewarding.

Although as artists we are often times our worst critics, its rare for an artist to look at their own print and become disgusted.

Sure, we’ll be a little critical - maybe the color is a little off or the composition could have been better.

But overall, there’s a shining sense of satisfaction from seeing one’s own work on paper.

Knowing you created and brought that to life is something noteworthy.

A photo isn’t done until it’s on paper.

This is a common saying floating around the community, and it makes sense.

As photographers I believe we strive to capture the essence of something three dimensional. Something we’re taken with exists in the real world and through our lens we convey and share that with others. But unless we bring that back to the third dimension, have we ever truly captured anything?

Say we leave our photo to exist only as a digital medium, floating along the edges of cyberspace. This is the second dimension - there is nothing tangible about it.

We can’t hold, feel, or touch it.

What’s needed is to bring what we’ve taken back into print.

The physical medium allows us to capture life.

Otherwise we’re just grasping at straws, allured by the illusion that maybe, just maybe…we may have captured something.